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5  0  y  96 


Copyrieht,  1913 

By  The  Centliry  Co. 
as  "Life  After  Death" 

Copyright,  1913 

By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 


.  f  •      •  C  •       I 


translator's    note 

Our  Eternity  is  a  very  considerable  exten- 
sion  of  the  essay  on  Death  which  was  pub- 
lished as  a  separate  work  in  1 9 1 1  and  which 
is  now  superseded  by  the  present  volume. 
^     Chapters  IV  to  VIII  are  entirely  new  and 
^  ^    the  author  has  added  largely  to  all  the  other 
chapters.     The  translation  of  those  portions 
of  the  book  which  have  already  appeared  in 
V*    print  has  been  revised  from  end  to  end. 

In    the    reports    of   conversations    held 
^    through   mediums  at  various  spiritualistic 
s?     sittings,  I  have  quoted  the  ipslssima  verba 
of  the  speakers. 

A.  T.  DE  M. 
Chelsea,  6  May,  1913- 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
1, 


TRANSLATOR  S  NOTE        ....  5 

CHAPTER 

f  I     OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH         .  9 

II     ANNIHILATION         .        .        .        .  37 

III  THE    SURVIVAL    OF    OUR    CON- 

SCIOUSNESS     45 

IV  THE  THEOSOPHICAL  HYPOTHE- 

SIS         69 

V     THE  NEOSPIRITUALISTIC  HYPO- 
THESIS :  APPARITIONS      .        .  79 

VI     COMMUNICATIONS     WITH    THE 

DEAD 89 

VII     CROSS   CORRESPONDENCE    .        .  I31 
VIII     REINCARNATION      ....  I47 
IX     THE  FATE  OF  OUR  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS            177 

X     THE  TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY  197 

XI     OUR  FATE  IN  THOSE  INFINITIES  22  1 

XII     CONCLUSIONS 245 


CHAPTER    I 

OUR      INJUSTICE      TO      DEATH 


CHAPTER  I 

OUR   INJUSTICE   TO   DEATH 
I 

IT  has  been  well  said: 
"Death  and  death  alone  is  what  we 
must  consult  about  life ;  and  not  some  vague 
future  or  survival,  where  we  shall  not  be. 
It  is  our  own  end;  and  everything  happens 
in  the  interval  between  death  and  now.  Do 
not  talk  to  me  of  those  imaginary  prolonga- 
tions which  wield  over  us  the  childish  spell 
of  number;  do  not  talk  to  me — to  me  who 
am  to  die  outright — of  societies  and  peo- 
ples !  There  is  no  reality,  there  is  no  true 
duration,  save  that  between  the  cradle  and 
the  grave.  The  rest  is  mere  bombast, 
show,  delusion!  They  call  me  a  master 
because  of  some  magic  in  my  speech  and 

II 


Our  Eternity 

thoughts;  but  I  am  a  frightened  child  in 
the  presence  of  death  !"^ 

2 

That  is  where  we  stand.  For  us,  death 
is  the  one  event  that  counts  in  our  hfe  and 
in  our  universe.  It  is  the  point  whereat  all 
that  escapes  our  vigilance  unites  and  con- 
spires against  our  happiness.  The  more 
our  thoughts  struggle  to  turn  away  from 
it,  the  closer  do  they  press  around  it.  The 
more  we  dread  it,  the  more  dreadful  it 
becomes,  for  it  but  thrives  on  our  fears. 
He  who  seeks  to  forget  it  has  his  memory 
filled  with  it;  he  who  tries  to  shun  it  meets 
naught  else.  It  clouds  everything  with  its 
shadow.  But  though  we  think  of  death  in- 
cessantly, we  do  so  unconsciously,  without 
learning  to  know  death.  We  compel  our 
attention  to  turn  its  back  upon  it,  instead 
of  going  to  it  with  uplifted  head.     All  the 

'Marie  Leneru,  Les  Affranchis,  Act  iii,  sc.  4. 


12 


Our  Eternity 

forces  which  might  avail  to  face  death  we 
exhaust  in  averting  our  will  from  it.  We 
deliver  death  into  the  groping  hands  of  in- 
stinct and  we  grant  It  not  one  hour  of  our 
intelligence.  Is  It  surprising  that  the  idea 
of  death,  which  should  be  the  most  perfect 
and  the  most  luminous  of  ideas — being  the 
most  persistent  and  the  most  Inevitable — 
remains  the  flimsiest  and  the  only  one  that 
is  a  laggard?  How  should  we  know  the 
one  power  which  we  never  look  in  the  face? 
How  could  It  have  profited  by  gleams 
kindled  only  to  help  us  escape  It?  To 
fathom  its  abysses,  we  wait  until  the  most 
enfeebled,  the  most  disordered  moments  of 
our  life  arrive.  We  do  not  think  of  death 
until  we  have  no  longer  the  strength,  I  will 
not  say,  to  think,  but  even  to  breathe.  A 
man  returning  among  us  from  another 
century  would  have  difficulty  in  recognizing, 
In  the  depths  of  a  present-day  soul,  the 
image  of  his  gods,  of  his  duty,  of  his  love  or 

13 


Our  Eternity 

of  his  universe;  but  the  figure  of  death, 
when  everything  has  changed  around  it  and 
when  even  that  which  composes  it  and  upon 
which  it  depends  has  vanished,  he  would 
find  almost  untouched,  rough-drawn  as  it 
was  by  our  fathers,  hundreds,  nay,  thou- 
sands of  years  ago.  Our  intelligence,  grown 
so  bold  and  active,  has  not  worked  upon 
this  figure,  has  not,  so  to  speak,  retouched  it 
In  any  way.  Though  we  may  no  longer  be- 
lieve in  the  tortures  of  the  damned,  all  the 
vital  cells  of  the  most  sceptical  among  us 
are  still  steeped  In  the  appalling  mystery 
of  the  Hebrew  Sheol,  the  pagan  Hades,  or 
the  Christian  Hell.  Though  it  may  no 
longer  be  lighted  by  very  definite  flames,  the 
gulf  still  opens  at  the  end  of  life  and.  If  less 
known,  is  all  the  more  formidable.  And, 
therefore,  when  the  impending  hour  strikes 
to  which  we  dared  not  raise  our  eyes,  every- 
thing fails  us  at  the  same  time.  Those  two 
or  three  uncertain  Ideas  whereon,  without 

14 


Our  Eternity 

examining  them,  we  had  meant  to  lean,  give 
way  like  rushes  beneath  the  weight  of  the 
last  minutes.  In  vain  we  seek  a  refuge 
among  reflections  that  are  Illusive  or  are 
strange  to  us  and  do  not  know  the  roads 
to  our  heart.  No  one  awaits  us  on  the  last 
shore  where  all  Is  unprepared,  where  naught 
remains  afoot  save  terror. 

3 

Bossuet,  the  great  poet  of  the  tomb,  says : 

"It  is  not  worthy  of  a  Christian" — and  I 
would  add,  of  a  man — "to  postpone  his 
struggle  with  death  until  the  moment  when 
it  arrives  to  carry  him  off." 

It  were  a  salutary  thing  for  each  of  us  to 
work  out  his  Idea  of  death  in  the  light  of  his 
days  and  the  strength  of  his  Intelligence  and 
to  stand  by  it.     He  would  say  to  death: 

"I  know  not  who  you  are,  or  I  would  be 
your  master;  but,  in  days  when  my  eyes 
saw  clearer  than  to-day,  I  learned  what  you 

15 


Our  Eternity 

were  not:  that  is  enough  to  prevent  you 
from  becoming  mine." 

He  would  thus  bear,  graven  on  his  mem- 
ory, a  tried  image  against  which  the  last 
agony  would  not  prevail  and  from  which 
the  phantom-stricken  eyes  would  draw  fresh 
comfort.  Instead  of  the  terrible  prayer  of 
the  dying,  which  is  the  prayer  of  the  depths, 
he  would  say  his  own  prayer,  that  of  the 
peaks  of  his  existence,  where  would  be 
gathered,  like  angels  of  peace,  the  most 
lucid,  the  most  rarefied  thoughts  of  his  life. 
Is  not  that  the  prayer  of  prayers?  After 
all,  what  is  a  true  and  worthy  prayer,  if 
not  the  most  ardent  and  disinterested  effort 
to  reach  and  grasp  the  unknown? 

4 

"The  doctors  and  the  priests,"  said 
Napoleon,  "have  long  been  making  death 
grievous." 

And  Bacon  wrote: 

i6 


Our  Eternity 

"Pompa  mortis  magis  terret  qiiam  mors 
ipsa. 

Let  us,  then,  learn  to  look  upon  death  as 
it  is  in  itself,  free  from  the  horrors  of  matter 
and  stripped  of  the  terrors  of  the  imagina- 
tion. Let  us  first  get  rid  of  all  that  goes 
before  and  does  not  belong  to  it.  Thus,  we 
impute  to  it  the  tortures  of  the  last  illness; 
and  that  is  not  just.  Illnesses  have  nothing 
in  common  with  that  which  ends  them. 
They  form  part  of  life  and  not  of  death. 
We  readily  forget  the  most  cruel  sufferings 
that  restore  us  to  health;  and  the  first  sun 
of  convalescence  destroys  the  most  unbear- 
able memories  of  the  chamber  of  pain.  But 
let  death  come;  and  at  once  we  overwhelm 
it  with  all  the  evil  done  before  it.  Not  a 
tear  but  is  remembered  and  used  as  a  re- 
proach, not  a  cry  of  pain  but  becomes  a  cry 
of  accusation.  Death  alone  bears  the  weight 
of  the  errors  of  nature  or  the  ignorance  of 
science  that  have  uselessly  prolonged  tor- 

17 


Our  Eternity 

ments  in  whose  name  we  curse  death  because 
it  puts  a  term  to  them. 

5 

In  point  of  fact,  whereas  sicknesses  be- 
long to  nature  or  to  life,  the  agony  which 
seems  peculiar  to  death  is  wholly  in  the 
hands  of  men.  Now  what  we  most  dread 
is  the  awful  struggle  at  the  end  and  espe- 
cially the  last,  terrible  second  of  rupture 
which  we  shall  perhaps  see  approaching 
during  long  hours  of  helplessness  and  which 
suddenly  hurls  us,  naked,  disarmed,  aban- 
doned by  all  and  stripped  of  everything, 
into  an  unknown  that  is  the  home  of  the 
only  invincible  terrors  which  the  soul  of 
man  has  ever  felt. 

It  is  doubly  unjust  to  impute  the  torments 
of  that  second  to  death.  We  shall  see  pres- 
ently in  what  manner  a  man  of  to-day,  if 
he  would  remain  faithful  to  his  ideas, 
should  picture  to  himself  the  unknown  into 

i8 


Our  Eternity 

which  death  flings  us.  Let  us  confine  our- 
selves here  to  the  last  struggle.  As  science 
progresses,  it  prolongs  the  agony  which  is 
the  most  dreadful  moment  and  the  sharpest 
peak  of  human  pain  and  horror,  for  the 
watchers,  at  least;  for  very  often  the  con- 
sciousness of  him  whom  death,  in  Bossuet's 
phrase,  has  "brought  to  bay"  is  already 
greatly  dulled  and  perceives  no  more  than 
the  distant  murmur  of  the  sufferings  which 
it  seems  to  be  enduring.  All  doctors  con- 
sider it  their  first  duty  to  prolong  to  the 
uttermost  even  the  cruellest  pangs  of  the 
most  hopeless  agony.  Who  has  not,  at  the 
bedside  of  a  dying  man,  twenty  times 
wished  and  not  once  dared  to  throw  himself 
at  their  feet  and  implore  them  to  show 
mercy?  They  are  filled  with  so  great  a  cert- 
ainty and  the  duty  which  they  obey  leaves 
so  little  room  for  the  least  doubt  that  pity 
and  reason,  blinded  by  tears,  curb  their  re- 
volt and  recoil  before  a  law  which  all  recog- 

19 


Our  Eternity 
nlze  and  revere  as  the  highest  law  of  man's 


conscience. 


One  day,  this  prejudice  will  strike  us  as 
barbarous.  Its  roots  go  down  to  the  un- 
acknowledged fears  left  in  the  heart  by 
religions  that  have  long  since  died  out  in  the 
intelligence  of  men.  That  is  why  the  doc- 
tors act  as  though  they  were  convinced  that 
there  is  no  known  torture  but  is  preferable 
to  those  awaiting  us  in  the  unknown.  They 
seem  persuaded  that  every  minute  gained 
amid  the  most  intolerable  sufferings  is 
snatched  from  the  incomparably  more 
dreadful  sufferings  which  the  mysteries  of 
the  hereafter  reserve  for  men;  and,  of  two 
evils,  to  avoid  that  which  they  know  to  be 
imaginary,  they  choose  the  only  real  one. 
Besides,  in  thus  postponing  the  end  of  a 
torture,  which,  as  old  Seneca  says,  is  the  best 
part  of  that  tortlire,  they  are  but  yielding 
I       20 


Our  Eternity 

to  the  unanimous  error  which  makes  its  en- 
closing circle  more  iron-bound  every  day : 
the  prolongation  of  the  agony  increasing  the 
horror  of  death;  and  the  horror  of  death 
demanding  the  prolongation  of  the  agony. 

7 

The  doctors,  on  their  side,  say  or  might 
say  that,  in  the  present  stage  of  science,  two 
or  three  cases  excepted,  there  is  never  a 
certainty  of  death.  Not  to  support  life  to 
its  last  limits,  even  at  the  cost  of  insupport- 
able torments,  might  be  murder.  Doubt- 
less there  is  not  one  chance  in  a  hundred 
thousand  that  the  patient  escape.  No 
matter.  If  that  chance  exist  which,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  will  give  but  a  few  days, 
or,  at  the  utmost,  a  few  months  of  a  life 
that  will  not  be  the  real  life,  but  much 
rather,  as  the  Romans  called  it,  "an  ex- 
tended death,"  those  hundred  thousand  use- 
less torments  will  not  have  been  in  vain.    A 

21 


Our  Eternity 

single  hour  snatched  from  death  outweighs 
a  whole  existence  of  tortures. 

Here  are,  face  to  face,  two  values  that 
cannot  be  compared;  and,  if  we  mean  to 
weigh  them  in  the  same  balance,  we  must 
heap  the  scale  which  we  see  with  all  that 
remains  to  us,  that  is  to  say,  with  every 
imaginable  pain,  for  at  the  decisive  hour 
this  is  the  only  weight  which  counts  and 
which  is  heavy  enough  to  raise  by  a  hair- 
breadth the  other  scale  that  dips  into  what 
we  do  not  see  and  is  loaded  with  the  thick 
darkness  of  another  world. 

8 

Swollen  by  so  many  adventitious  horrors, 
the  horror  of  death  becomes  such  that, 
without  reasoning,  we  accept  the  doctors' 
reasons.  And  yet  there  is  one  point  on 
which  they  are  beginning  to  yield  and  to 
agree.  They  are  slowly  consenting,  when 
there  is  no  hope  left,  if  not  to  deaden,  at 

22 


Our  Eternity 

least  to  dull  the  last  agonies.  Formerly, 
none  of  them  would  have  dared  to  do  so; 
and,  even  to-day,  many  of  them  hesitate 
and,  like  misers,  measure  out  niggardly 
drops  of  the  clemency  and  peace  which 
they  ought  to  lavish  and  which  they  grudge 
in  their  dread  of  weakening  the  last  resist- 
ance, that  Is  to  say,  the  most  useless  and 
painful  quiverings  of  reluctant  life  refusing 
to  give  place  to  oncoming  rest. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  decide  whether  their 
pity  might  show  greater  daring.  It  is 
enough  to  state  once  more  that  all  this  has 
no  concern  with  death.  It  happens  before 
it  and  beneath  it.  It  is  not  the  arrival  of 
death,  but  the  departure  of  life  that  is 
appalling.  It  is  not  death,  but  life  that  we 
must  act  upon.  It  Is  not  death  that  attacks 
life;  it  is  life  that  wrongfully  resists  death. 
Evils  hasten  up  from  every  side  at  the  ap- 
proach of  death,  but  not  at  its  call;  and, 
though  they  gather  round  it,  they  did  not 

23 


Our  Eternity 

come  with  it.  Do  you  accuse  sleep  of  the 
fatigue  that  oppresses  you  if  you  do  not 
yield  to  it?  All  those  strugglings,  those 
waitings,  those  tossings,  those  tragic  curs- 
ings are  on  that  side  of  the  slope  to  which 
we  cling  and  not  on  the  other  side.  They 
are,  for  that  matter,  accidental  and  tem- 
porary and  emanate  only  from  our  igno- 
rance. All  our  knowledge  merely  helps  us 
to  die  a  more  painful  death  than  the  animals 
that  know  nothing.  A  day  will  come  when 
science  will  turn  upon  its  error  and  no  longer 
hesitate  to  shorten  our  woes.  A  day  will 
come  when  it  will  dare  and  act  with  cert- 
ainty; when  life,  grown  wiser,  will  depart 
silently  at  its  hour,  knowing  that  it  has 
reached  its  term,  even  as  it  withdraws 
silently  every  evening,  knowing  that  its  task 
is  done.  Once  the  doctor  and  the  sick  man 
have  learned  what  they  have  to  learn,  there 
will  be  no  physical  nor  metaphysical  reason 
why  the  advent  of  death  should  not  be  as 

24 


Our  Eternity- 
salutary  as  that  of  sleep.  Perhaps  even,  as 
there  will  be  nothing  else  to  take  Into  con- 
sideration, it  will  be  possible  to  surround 
death  with  profounder  ecstasies  and  fairer 
dreams.  In  any  case  and  from  this  day, 
with  death  once  acquitted  of  that  which 
goes  before,  It  will  be  easier  to  look  upon  it 
without  fear  and  to  lighten  that  which 
comes  after. 

9 

Death,  as  we  usually  picture  It,  has  two 
terrors  looming  behind  It.  The  first  has 
neither  face  nor  form  and  permeates  the 
whole  region  of  our  mind;  the  other  Is 
more  definite,  more  explicit,  but  almost  as 
powerful.  The  latter  strikes  all  our  senses. 
Let  us  examine  it  first. 

Even  as  we  impute  to  death  all  the  evils 
that  precede  it,  so  do  we  add  to  the  dread 
which  it  Inspires  all  that  happens  beyond  It, 
thus  doing  it  the  same  injustice  at  its  going 

25 


Our  Eternity 

as  at  its  coming.  Is  it  death  that  digs  our 
graves  and  orders  us  to  keep  there  that 
which  is  made  to  disappear?  If  we  cannot 
think  without  horror  of  what  befalls  the  be- 
loved in  the  grave,  is  it  death  or  we  that 
placed  him  there?  Because  death  carries 
the  spirit  to  some  place  unknown,  shall  we 
reproach  It  with  our  bestowal  of  the  body 
which  it  leaves  with  us  ?  Death  descends  into 
our  midst  to  change  the  place  of  a  life  or 
change  Its  form:  let  us  judge  it  by  what  it 
does  and  not  by  what  we  do  before  it  comes 
and  after  it  is  gone.  For  it  is  already  far 
away  when  we  begin  the  frightful  work 
which  we  try  hard  to  prolong  to  the  very 
utmost,  as  though  we  were  persuaded  that 
It  is  our  only  security  against  forgetfulness. 
I  am  well  aware  that,  from  any  other  than 
the  human  point  of  view,  this  proceeding  is 
very  innocent;  and  that,  looked  upon  from 
a  sufficient  height,  decomposing  flesh  is  no 
more  repulsive  than  a  fading  flower  or  a 

26 


Our  Eternity 

crumbling  stone.  But,  when  all  is  said,  it 
offends  our  senses,  shocks  our  memory, 
daunts  our  courage,  whereas  it  would  be  so 
easy  for  us  to  avoid  the  foul  ordeal.  Puri- 
fied by  fire,  the  remembrance  lives  en- 
throned as  a  beautiful  idea;  and  death  is 
naught  but  an  immortal  birth  cradled  in 
flames.  This  has  been  well  understood  by 
the  wisest  and  happiest  nations  in  history. 
What  happens  in  our  graves  poisons  our 
thoughts  together  with  our  bodies.  The 
figure  of  death,  in  the  imagination  of  men, 
depends  before  all  upon  the  form  of  burial; 
and  the  funeral  rites  govern  not  only  the 
fate  of  those  who  depart,  but  also  the  happi- 
ness of  those  who  stay,  for  they  raise  in  the 
ultimate  background  of  life  the  great  image 
upon  which  men's  eyes  linger  in  consolation 
or  despair. 

lO 

There  is,  therefore,  but  one  terror  par- 
ticular to  death :  that  of  the  unknown  into 


Our  Eternity 

which  it  hurls  us.  In  facing  it,  let  us  lose 
no  time  in  putting  from  our  minds  all  that 
the  positive  religions  have  left  there.  Let 
us  remember  only  that  it  is  not  for  us  to 
prove  that  they  are  not  proved,  but  for 
them  to  establish  that  they  are  true.  Now 
not  one  of  them  brings  us  a  proof  before 
which  an  honest  intelligence  can  bow.  Nor 
would  it  suffice  if  that  intelligence  were  able 
to  bow;  for  man  lawfully  to  believe  and 
thus  to  limit  his  endless  seeking,  the  proof 
would  need  to  be  irresistible.  The  God 
offered  to  us  by  the  best  and  strongest  of 
them  has  given  us  our  reason  to  employ 
loyally  and  fully,  that  is  to  say,  to  try  to 
attain,  before  all  and  in  all  things,  that 
which  appears  to  be  the  truth.  Can  He 
exact  that  we  should  accept,  in  spite  of  it,  a 
belief  whose  doubtfulness,  from  the  human 
point  of  view,  is  not  denied  by  its  wisest 
and  most  ardent  defenders?  He  only  offers 
us  a  very  uncertain  story,  which,  even  if 

28 


Our  Eternity 

scientifically  substantiated,  would  be  merely 
a  beautiful  lesson  In  morality  and  which  Is 
buttressed  by  prophecies  and  miracles  no 
less  doubtful.  Must  we  here  call  to  mind 
that  Pascal,  to  defend  that  creed  which  was 
already  tottering  at  a  time  when  It  seemed 
at  Its  zenith,  vainly  attempted  a  demonstra- 
tion the  mere  sight  of  which  would  be 
enough  to  destroy  the  last  remnant  of  faith 
In  a  wavering  mind?  Better  than  any 
other,  he  knew  the  stock  proofs  of  the  theo- 
logians, for  they  had  been  the  sole  study 
of  the  last  years  of  his  life.  If  but  one  of 
these  proofs  could  have  resisted  examina- 
tion, his  genius,  one  of  the  three  or  four 
most  profound  and  lucid  geniuses  ever 
known  to  humanity,  must  have  given  It  an 
Irresistible  force.  But  he  does  not  linger 
over  these  arguments,  whose  weakness  he 
feels  too  well;  he  pushes  them  scornfully 
aside,  he  glories  and,  In  a  manner,  rejoices 
in  their  futility: 


20 


Our  Eternity 

"Who  then  will  blame  Christians  for  not 
being  able  to  give  a  reason  for  their  faith, 
those  who  profess  a  religion  for  which  they 
cannot  give  a  reason?  They  declare,  in 
presenting  it  to  the  world,  that  it  is  a  foolish- 
ness, stiiltitiam;  and  then  you  complain  that 
they  do  not  prove  it!  If  they  proved  it, 
they  would  not  be  keeping  their  word;  it 
is  in  being  destitute  of  proofs  that  they  are 
not  destitute  of  sense." 

His  solitary  argument,  the  one  to  which 
he  clings  desperately  and  devotes  all  the 
power  of  his  genius,  is  the  very  condition  of 
man  in  the  universe,  that  incomprehensible 
medley  of  greatness  and  wretchedness,  for 
which  there  is  no  accounting  save  by  the 
mystery  of  the  first  fall : 

"For  man  is  more  incomprehensible 
without  that  mystery  than  the  mystery 
itself  is  incomprehensible  to  man." 

He  is  therefore  reduced  to  establishing 
the  truth  of  the  Scriptures  by  an  argument 

30 


Our  Eternity 

drawn  from  the  very  Scriptures  in  quest- 
ion; and — what  is  more  serious — to  ex- 
plain a  wide  and  great  and  indisputable 
myster}^  by  another,  small,  narrow  and  crude 
mystery  that  rests  only  upon  the  legend 
which  it  is  his  business  to  prove.  And,  let 
us  observe  in  passing,  it  is  a  fatal  thing  to 
replace  one  mystery  by  another  and  lesser 
mystery.  In  the  hierarchy  of  the  unknown, 
mankind  always  ascends  from  the  smaller 
to  the  greater.  On  the  other  hand,  to  de- 
scend from  the  greater  to  the  smaller  is  to 
relapse  into  the  condition  of  primitive  man, 
who  carries  his  barbarism  to  the  point  of 
replacing  the  infinite  by  a  fetish  or  an  amu- 
let. The  measure  of  man's  greatness  is  the 
greatness  of  the  mysteries  which  he  culti- 
vates or  on  which  he  dwells. 

To  return  to  Pascal,  he  feels  that  every- 
thing is  crumbling  around  him;  and  so,  in 
the  collapse  of  human  reason,  he  at  last 
offers  us  the  monstrous  wager  that  is  the 

31 


Our  Eternity 

supreme  avowal  of  the  bankruptcy  and  de- 
spair of  his  faith.  God,  he  says,  meaning 
his  God  and  the  Christian  religion  with  all 
its  precepts  and  all  its  consequences,  exists 
or  does  not  exist.  We  are  unable,  by  human 
arguments,  to  prove  that  He  exists  or  that 
He  does  not  exist. 

"If  there  is  a  God,  He  is  infinitely  in- 
comprehensible, because,  having  neither 
divisions  nor  bounds.  He  has  no  relation  to 
us.  We  are  therefore  incapable  of  knowing 
either  what  He  is  or  if  He  is." 
God  is  or  is  not.  ' 

"But  to  which  side  shall  we  lean? 
Reason  can  determine  nothing  about  it. 
There  is  an  infinite  gulf  that  separates  us. 
A  game  is  played  at  the  uttermost  part  of 
this  infinite  distance,  in  which  heads  may 
turn  up  or  tails.  Which  will  you  wager? 
There  is  no  reason  for  betting  on  either  one 
or  the  other;  you  cannot  reasonably  defend 
either," 

32 


Our  Eternity 

The  correct  course  would  be  not  to  wager 
at  all. 

"Yes,  but  you  must  wager:  this  is  not  a 
matter  for  your  will;  you  are  launched 
in  it." 

Not  to  wager  that  God  exists  means 
wagering  that  He  does  not  exist,  for  which 
He  will  punish  you  eternally.  What  then 
do  you  risk  by  wagering,  at  all  hazards,  that 
He  exists?  If  He  does  not,  you  lose  a  few 
small  pleasures,  a  few  wretched  comforts 
of  this  life,  because  your  little  sacrifice  will 
not  have  been  rewarded;  if  He  exists,  you 
gain  an  eternity  of  unspeakable  happiness. 

"  'It  is  true,  but,  in  spite  of  all,  I  am  so 
made  that  I  cannot  believe.' 

"Never  mind,  follow  the  way  in  which 
they  began  who  believe  and  who  at  first 
did  not  believe  either,  taking  holy  water, 
having  masses  said,  etc.  That  in  itself  will 
make  you  believe  and  will  reduce  you  to  the 
level  of  the  beasts. 

33 


Our  Eternity 

"  'But  that  Is  just  what  I  am  afraid  of/ 
"Why?  What  have  you  to  lose?" 
Nearly  three  centuries  of  apologetics 
have  not  added  one  useful  argument  to  that 
terrible  and  despairing  page  of  Pascal.  And 
this  is  all  that  human  intelligence  has  found 
to  compel  our  life.  If  the  God  who  de- 
mands our  faith  will  not  have  us  decide 
by  our  reason,  by  what  then  must  our  choice 
be  made?  By  usage?  By  the  accidents  of 
race  or  birth,  by  some  aesthetic  or  senti- 
mental pitch-and-toss?  Or  has  He  set 
within  us  another  higher  and  surer  faculty 
before  which  the  understanding  must  yield? 
If  so,  where  is  it?  What  is  its  name?  If 
this  God  punishes  us  for  not  having  blindly 
followed  a  faith  that  does  not  force  Itself 
irresistibly  upon  the  intelligence  which  He 
gave  us;  if  He  chastises  us  for  not  having 
made,  in  the  presence  of  the  great  enigma 
with  which  He  confronts  us,  a  choice  which 
is  rejected  by  that  best  and  most  divine  part 

34 


Our  Eternity 

which  He  has  implanted  in  us,  we  have 
nothing  left  to  reply;  we  are  the  dupes  of 
a  cruel  and  incomprehensible  sport,  we 
are  the  victims  of  a  terrible  snare  and  an 
immense  injustice;  and,  whatever  the  tor- 
ments wherewith  that  injustice  may  load 
us,  they  will  be  less  intolerable  than  the 
eternal  presence  of  its  Author. 


35 


CHAPTER    II 


ANNIHILATION 


5  0  '^  'z  0 


CHAPTER  II 

ANNIHILATION 


AND  now  we  stand  before  the  abyss.  It 
Is  void  of  all  the  dreams  with  which 
our  fathers  peopled  it.  They  thought  that 
they  knew  what  was  there;  we  know  only 
what  is  not  there.  It  is  the  vaster  by  all 
that  we  have  learned  to  know  nothing  of. 
While  waiting  for  a  scientific  certainty  to 
break  through  its  darkness — for  man  has 
the  right  to  hope  for  that  which  he  does 
not  yet  conceive — the  only  point  that  inter- 
ests us,  because  it  is  situated  in  the  little 
circle  which  our  actual  intelligence  traces  in 
the  thickest  blackness  of  the  night,  is  to 
know  whether  the  unknown  for  which  we 
are  bound  will  be  dreadful  or  not. 

Outside    the    religions,    there    are    four 

39 


Our  Eternity 

imaginable  solutions  and  no  more:  total 
annihilation;  survival  with  our  conscious- 
ness of  to-day;  survival  without  any  sort  of 
consciousness;  lastly,  survival  in  the  uni- 
versal consciousness,  or  with  a  consciousness 
different  from  that  which  we  possess  in  this 
world. 


Total  annihilation  is  impossible.  We  are 
the  prisoners  of  an  infinity  without  outlet, 
wherein  nothing  perishes,  wherein  every- 
thing is  dispersed,  but  nothing  lost.  Neither 
a  body  nor  a  thought  can  drop  out  of  the 
universe,  out  of  time  and  space.  Not  an 
atom  of  our  flesh,  not  a  quiver  of  our  nerves 
will  go  where  they  will  cease  to  be,  for  there 
is  no  place  where  anything  ceases  to  be. 
The  brightness  of  a  star  extinguished 
millions  of  years  ago  still  wanders  in  the 
ether  where  our  eyes  will  perhaps  behold  it 
this  very  night,  pursuing  its  endless  road. 

40 


Our  Eternity 

It  is  the  same  with  all  that  we  see,  as  with 
all  that  we  do  not  see.  To  be  able  to  do 
away  with  a  thing,  that  is  to  say,  to  fling 
It  into  nothingness,  nothingness  would  have 
to  exist;  and,  if  it  exists,  under  whatever 
form.  It  is  no  longer  nothingness.  As  soon 
as  we  try  to  analyze  it,  to  define  it,  or  to 
understand  it,  thoughts  and  expressions  fail 
us,  or  create  that  which  they  are  struggling 
to  deny.  It  is  as  contrary  to  the  nature  of 
our  reason  and  probably  of  all  Imaginable 
reason  to  conceive  nothingness  as  to  con- 
ceive limits  to  Infinity.  Nothingness,  be- 
sides, is  but  a  negative  infinity,  a  sort  of 
infinity  of  darkness  opposed  to  that  which 
our  Intelligence  strives  to  illumine,  or  rather 
it  Is  but  a  child-name  or  nickname  which  our 
mind  has  bestowed  upon  that  which  It  has 
not  attempted  to  embrace,  for  we  call 
nothingness  all  that  escapes  our  senses  or 
our  reason  and  exists  without  our  know- 
ledge. 


Our  Eternity 
3 

But,  it  will  perhaps  be  said,  though  the 
annihilation  of  every  world  and  every  thing 
be  impossible,  it  is  not  so  certain  that  their 
death  is  impossible;  and,  to  us,  what  is  the 
difference  between  nothingness  and  ever- 
lasting death?  Here  again  we  are  led 
astray  by  our  imagination  and  by  words. 
We  can  no  more  conceive  death  than  we 
can  conceive  nothingness.  We  use  the  word 
death  to  cover  those  fragments  of  nothing- 
ness which  we  believe  that  we  understand; 
but,  on  closer  examination,  we  are  bound  to 
recognize  that  our  idea  of  death  is  much 
too  puerile  for  it  to  contain  the  least  truth. 
It  reaches  no  higher  than  our  own  bodies 
and  cannot  measure  the  destinies  of  the  uni- 
verse. We  give  the  name  of  death  to  any- 
thing that  has  a  life  a  little  different  from 
ours.  Even  so  do  we  act  toward  a  world 
that  appears  to  us  motionless  and  frozen, 


Our  Eternity 

the  moon,  for  instance,  because  we  are  per- 
suaded that  any  form  of  existence,  animal 
or  vegetable,  Is  extinguished  upon  it  for 
ever.  But  it  Is  now  some  years  since  we 
learned  that  the  most  Inert  matter,  to  out- 
ward seeming.  Is  animated  by  movements 
so  powerful  and  furious  that  all  animal  or 
vegetable  life  Is  no  more  than  sleep  and 
immobility  by  the  side  of  the  swirling  eddies 
and  immeasurable  energy  locked  up  in  a 
wayside  stone. 

"There  is  no  room  for  death!"  cried 
Emily  Bronte. 

But,  even  if.  In  the  Infinite  series  of  the 
centuries,  all  matter  should  really  become 
Inert  and  motionless,  it  would  none  the  less 
persist  under  one  form  or  another;  and 
persistence,  though  it  were  In  total  immo- 
bility, would,  after  all,  be  but  a  form  of  life 
stable  and  silent  at  last.  All  that  dies  falls 
into  life;  and  all  that  Is  born  Is  of  the  same 
age  as  that  which  dies.    If  death  carried  us 

43 


Our  Eternity 

to  nothingness,  did  birth  then  draw  us  out 
of  that  same  nothingness?  Why  should 
the  second  be  more  impossible  than  the 
first?  The  higher  human  thought  rises  and 
the  wider  it  expands,  the  less  comprehen- 
sible do  nothingness  and  death  become.  In 
any  case — and  this  is  what  matters  here — if 
nothingness  were  possible,  since  it  could  not 
be  anything  whatever,  it  could  not  be 
dreadful. 


44 


CHAPTER  III 


THE   SURVIVAL   OF   OUR 
CONSCIOUSNESS 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   SURVIVAL   OF   OUR 
CONSCIOUSNESS 

I 

NEXT  comes  survival  with  our  con- 
sciousness of  to-day.  I  have  broached 
this  question  in  an  essay  on  Immortality,^ 
of  which  I  will  only  reproduce  a  few  essen- 
tial passages,  restricting  myself  to  support- 
ing them  with  new  considerations. 

What  composes  this  sense  of  the  ego 
which  turns  each  of  us  into  the  centre  of  the 
universe,  the  only  point  that  matters  in 
space  and  time?  Is  it  formed  of  sensations 
of  our  body,  or  of  thoughts  independent  of 
our  body?  Would  our  body  be  conscious 
of  itself  without  our  mind?     And,  on  the 

'  This  essay  forms  part  of  the  volume  published 
under  the  title  of  The  Measure  of  the  Hours. — Trans- 
lator's  Note. 

47 


Our  Eternity 

other  hand,  what  would  our  mind  be  with- 
out our  body?  We  know  bodies  without 
mind,  but  no  mind  without  a  body.  It  is 
almost  certain  that  an  intelligence  devoid 
of  senses,  devoid  of  organs  to  create  and 
nourish  it,  exists;  but  it  is  impossible  to 
imagine  that  ours  could  thus  exist  and  yet 
remain  similar  to  that  which  has  derived  all 
that  inspires  it  from  our  sensibility. 

This  ego,  as  we  conceive  it  when  we  re- 
flect upon  the  consequences  of  its  destruc- 
tion, this  ego,  therefore,  is  neither  our  mind 
nor  our  body,  since  we  recognize  that  both 
are  waves  that  roll  by  and  are  incessantly 
renewed.  Is  it  an  immovable  point,  which 
could  not  be  form  or  substance,  for  these 
are  always  In  evolution,  nor  yet  life,  which 
is  the  cause  or  effect  of  form  and  substance? 
In  truth,  it  is  impossible  for  us  either  to 
apprehend  or  define  it,  or  even  to  say  where 
it  dwells.  When  we  try  to  go  back  to  its 
last  source,  we  find  little  more  than  a  suc- 

48 


Our  Eternity- 
cession  of  memories,  a  mass  of  ideas,  con- 
fused, for  that  matter,  and  unsettled,  all 
connected  with  the  same  instinct,  the  instinct 
of  living:  a  mass  of  habits  of  our  sensibility 
and  of  conscious  or  unconscious  reactions 
against  the  surrounding  phenomena.  When 
all  is  said,  the  most  steadfast  point  of  that 
nebula  is  our  memory,  which  seems,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  be  a  somewhat  external,  a 
somewhat  accessory  faculty  and,  in  any  case, 
one  of  the  frailest  faculties  of  our  brain,  one 
of  those  which  disappear  the  most  promptly 
at  the  least  disturbance  of  our  health.  As 
an  English  poet  has  very  truly  said,  "that 
which  cries  aloud  for  eternity  is  the  very 
part  of  me  that  will  perish." 


It  matters  not:  that  uncertain,  indiscern- 
ible, fleeting  and  precarious  ego  is  so  much 
the  centre  of  our  being,  interests  us  so  ex- 
clusively, that  every  reality  disappears  be- 

49 


Our  Eternity 

fore  this  phantom.  It  is  utterly  indifferent 
to  us  that,  throughout  eternity,  our  body  or 
its  substance  should  know  every  joy  and 
every  glory,  undergo  the  most  splendid  and 
delightful  transformations,  become  flower, 
perfume,  beauty,  light,  air,  star — and  it  is 
certain  that  it  does  so  become  and  that  we 
must  look  for  our  dead  not  in  our  grave- 
yards, but  in  space  and  light  and  life — it  is 
likewise  indifferent  to  us  that  our  intelli- 
gence should  expand  until  it  takes  part  in 
the  life  of  the  worlds,  until  it  understands 
and  governs  it.  We  are  persuaded  that  all 
this  will  not  affect  us,  will  give  us  no  pleas- 
ure, will  not  happen  to  ourselves,  unless  that 
memory  of  a  few  almost  always  insignificant 
facts  accompany  us  and  witness  those  un- 
imaginable joys. 

"I  care  not,"  says  this  narrow  ego,  in  its 
firm  resolve  to  understand  nothing,  "I  care 
not  if  the  loftiest,  the  freest,  the  fairest 
portions  of  my  mind  be  eternally  living  and 

50 


Our  Eternity- 
radiant  in  the  supreme  gladness:  they  are 
no  longer  mine;  I  do  not  know  them. 
Death  has  cut  the  network  of  nerves  or 
memories  that  connected  them  with  I  know 
not  what  centres  wherein  lies  the  point 
which  I  feel  to  be  my  very  self.  They  are 
thus  set  loose,  floating  in  space  and  time; 
and  their  fate  is  as  alien  to  me  as  that  of  the 
most  distant  stars.  All  that  befalls  has  no 
existence  for  me  unless  I  can  recall  it  within 
that  mysterious  being  which  is  I  know  not 
where  and  precisely  nowhere  and  which  I 
turn  like  a  mirror  about  this  world  whose 
phenomena  take  shape  only  in  so  far  as  they 
are  reflected  in  it." 

3 

Thus  our  longing  for  immortality  de- 
stroys itself  while  expressing  itself,  since  it 
is  on  one  of  the  accessory  and  most  trans- 
ient parts  of  our  whole  life  that  we  base 
all  the  interest  of  our  after-life.     It  seems 

51 


Our  Eternity 

to  us  that,  if  our  existence  be  not  continued 
with  the  greater  part  of  its  drawbacks,  of 
the  pettiness  and  blemishes  that  character- 
ize it,  nothing  will  distinguish  it  from  that 
of  other  beings;  that  it  will  become  a  drop 
of  ignorance  in  the  ocean  of  the  unknown; 
and  that,  thenceforth,  all  that  may  come  to 
pass  will  no  longer  concern  us. 

What  immortality  can  one  promise  to 
men  who  almost  necessarily  conceive  it  in 
this  guise?  What  is  the  use  of  it?  asks  a 
puerile  but  profound  instinct.  Any  immor- 
tality that  does  not  drag  with  it  through 
eternity,  like  the  fetters  of  the  convict  that 
we  were,  the  strange  consciousness  formed 
during  a  few  years  of  movement,  any  im- 
mortality that  (iocs  not  bear  that  indelible 
mark  of  our  identity  is  for  us  as  though 
it  were  not.  Most  of  the  religions  have 
been  well  aware  of  this  and  have  reckoned 
with  that  instinct  which  desires  and  at  the 
same  time  destroys  the  after-life.    It  is  thus 

52 


Our  Eternity 

that  the  Catholic  Church,  going  back  to  the 
most  primitive  hopes,  promises  us  not  only 
the  integral  preservation  of  our  earthly  ego, 
but  even  the  resurrection  of  our  own  flesh. 
There  lies  the  crux  of  the  riddle.  When 
we  demand  that  this  small  consciousness, 
that  this  sense  of  a  special  ego — almost 
childish  and,  in  any  case,  extraordinarily 
limited;  probably  an  infirmity  of  our  actual 
intelligence — should  accompany  us  into  the 
infinity  of  time  in  order  that  we  may 
understand  and  enjoy  it,  are  we  not  wishing 
to  perceive  an  object  with  the  aid  of  an 
organ  which  is  not  intended  for  that  pur- 
pose? Are  we  not  asking  that  our  hand 
should  discover  the  light  or  that  our  eye 
should  appreciate  perfumes?  Are  we  not, 
rather,  acting  like  a  sick  man  who,  in  order 
to  recognize  himself,  to  be  quite  sure  that 
he  is  himself,  should  think  it  necessary  to 
continue  his  sickness  in  health  and  in  the 
unending  sequence  of  his  days?    The  com- 

53 


Our  Eternity 

parison,  indeed,  is  more  accurate  than  is  the 
habit  of  comparisons.  Picture  a  blind  man 
who  is  also  paralyzed  and  deaf.  He  has 
been  in  this  condition  from  his  birth  and  has 
just  attained  his  thirtieth  year.  What  can 
the  hours  have  embroidered'on  the  image- 
less  web  of  this  poor  life?  The  unhappy 
man  must  have  gathered  at  the  back  of  his 
memory,  for  lack  of  other  recollections,  a 
few  halting  sensations  of  heat  and  cold,  of 
weariness  and  rest,  of  more  or  less  active 
physical  sufferings,  of  hunger  and  thirst.  It 
is  probable  that  all  human  joys,  all  our 
hopes  and  ideals,  all  our  dreams  of  paradise 
will  be  reduced  for  him  to  the  vague  sense 
of  well-being  that  follows  the  alleviation  of 
a  pain.  There  you  have  the  only  possible 
equipment  of  that  consciousness  and  that 
ego.  The  intellect,  having  never  been  in- 
voked from  without,  will  sleep  soundly,  all 
ignorant  of  itself.  Nevertheless,  the  poor 
wretch  will  have  his  little  life,  to  which  he 

54 


Our  Eternity 

will  cling  as  closely  and  eagerly  as  though 
he  were  the  happiest  of  men.  He  will  dread 
death;  and  the  idea  of  entering  into  eternity 
without  carrying  with  him  the  emotions  and 
the  memories  of  his  dark  and  silent  sick-bed 
will  plunge  him  into  the  same  despair  into 
which  we  are  plunged  by  the  thought  of 
abandoning  a  glorious  life  of  light  and  love 
for  the  icy  darkness  of  the  tomb. 

4 

Let  us  now  suppose  that  a  miracle  sud- 
denly quicken  his  eyes  and  ears  and  reveal 
to  him,  through  the  open  window  by  his 
bedside,  the  dawn  rising  over  the  plain,  the 
song  of  the  birds  in  the  trees,  the  murmur 
of  the  wind  among  the  leaves  and  of  the 
water  lapping  its  banks,  the  echoing  of 
human  v^olces  among  the  morning  hills.  Let 
us  suppose  also  that  the  same  miracle,  com- 
pleting its  work,  restore  the  use  of  his  limbs. 
He  rises,  stretches  his  arms  to  that  prodigy 

55 


Our  Eternity 

which  as  yet  for  him  possesses  neither 
reality  nor  name:  the  light!  He  opens  the 
door,  staggers  out  amidst  the  effulgence; 
and  his  whole  body  is  merged  in  the  wonder 
of  it  all.  He  enters  into  an  ineffable  life, 
into  a  sky  whereof  no  dream  could  have 
given  him  a  foretaste;  and,  by  a  freak  which 
is  readily  admissible  in  this  sort  of  cure, 
health,  introducing  him  to  this  inconceivable 
and  unintelligible  existence,  wipes  out  in  him 
all  memory  of  days  past. 

What  will  be  the  state  of  this  ego,  of  this 
central  focus,  the  receptacle  of  all  our  sen- 
sations, the  spot  in  which  converges  all  that 
belongs  in  its  own  right  to  our  life,  the 
supreme  point,  the  "egotic"  point  of  our 
being,  if  I  may  venture  to  coin  a  word? 
Memory  being  abolished,  will  that  ego  re- 
cover within  itself  a  few  traces  of  the  man 
that  was?  A  new  force,  the  intellect, 
awaking  and  suddenly  displaying  unprece- 
dented activity,  what  relation  will  that  in- 

56 


Our  Eternity 

tellect  keep  up  with  the  inert,  dull  germ 
whence  it  has  sprung?  Where,  In  his  past, 
shall  the  man  fix  his  moorings  so  that  his 
identity  may  endure?  And  yet  will  there 
not  survive  within  him  some  sense  or  in- 
stinct, Independent  of  his  memory,  his  In- 
tellect and  I  know  not  what  other  faculties, 
that  will  make  him  recognize  that  It  is 
indeed  in  him  that  the  liberating  miracle 
has  been  wrought,  that  It  is  indeed  his  life 
and  not  his  neighbour's,  transformed, 
Irrecognlzable,  but  substantially  the  same, 
that  has  issued  from  the  silence  and  the 
darkness  to  prolong  itself  in  harmony  and 
light?  Can  we  picture  the  disorder,  the 
wandering  hither  and  thither  of  that  be- 
wildered consciousness?  Have  we  anv  idea 
In  what  manner  the  ego  of  yesterday  will 
unite  with  the  ego  of  to-day  and  how  the 
"egotic"  point,  the  only  point  which  we 
are  anxious  to  preserve  Intact,  will  behave 
in  that  delirium  and  that  upheaval? 

57 


Our  Eternity 

Let  us  first  endeavour  to  reply  with 
sufficient  precision  to  this  question  which 
comes  within  the  province  of  our  actual  and 
visible  life;  for,  if  we  are  unable  to  do  this, 
how  can  we  hope  to  solve  the  other  problem 
that  stares  every  man  in  the  face  at  the 
hour  of  death? 

5 

This  sensitive  point,  in  which  the  whole 
problem  is  summed  up — for  it  is  the  only 
one  in  question ;  and,  except  in  so  far  as  it  is 
concerned,  immortality  is  certain — this 
mysterious  point,  to  which,  in  the  presence 
of  death,  we  attach  so  high  a  value,  we  lose, 
strange  to  say,  at  any  moment  in  life  with- 
out feeling  the  least  anxiety.  Not  only  is  it 
destroyed  nightly  in  our  sleep,  but  even  in 
waking  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  a  host  of  acci- 
dents. A  wound,  a  shock,  an  illness,  a  little 
alcohol,  a  little  opium,  a  little  smoke  are 
enough  to  affect  it.    Even  when  nothing  im- 

58 


Our  Eternity 

pairs  it,  it  is  not  uniformly  perceptible.  An 
effort  is  often  necessary,  a  deliberate  looking 
into  ourselves,  before  we  can  recover  it  and 
become  aware  of  some  particular  event.  At 
the  least  distraction,  a  joy  passes  by  us 
without  touching  us,  without  giving  up  the 
pleasure  which  it  contains.  One  would  say 
that  the  functions  of  that  organ-  by  which 
we  taste  and  know  life  are  Intermittent  and 
that  the  presence  of  our  ego,  except  in  pain, 
is  but  a  rapid  and  perpetual  sequence  of 
departures  and  returns.  What  reassures  us 
is  that  we  think  ourselves  certain  to  find  it 
intact  on  waking,  after  the  wound,  the 
shock  or  the  distraction,  whereas  we  are 
persuaded,  so  fragile  do  we  feel  it  to  be, 
that  it  is  bound  to  disappear  for  ever  in  the 
awful  impact  between  life  and  death. 


One     foremost    truth,     pending    others 
which  the  future  will  no  doubt  reveal.  Is 

59 


Our  Eternity 

that,  in  these  questions  of  life  and  death, 
our  imagination  has  remained  very  childish. 
Almost  every  elsewhere,  it  is  ahead  of 
reason;  but  here  it  still  loiters  over  the 
games  of  infancy.  It  surrounds  itself  with 
the  barbaric  dreams  and  longings  where- 
with it  cradled  the  hopes  and  fears  of  cave- 
dwelling  man.  It  asks  for  things  that  are 
impossible  because  they  are  too  small.  It 
clamours  for  privileges  which,  if  obtained, 
were  more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  most 
enormous  disasters  with  which  nihility 
threatens  us.  Can  we  think  without  shud- 
dering of  an  eternity  contained  wholly 
within  our  paltry  present-day  consciousness? 
And  behold  how,  in  all  this,  we  obey  the 
illogical  whims  of  fancy  which  men  in  the 
olden  time  called  la  folle  du  logis.  Which 
of  us,  if  he  were  to  go  to  sleep  to-night  in 
the  scientific  certainty  of  awaking  in  a  hun- 
dred years  exactly  as  he  is  to-day,  with  his 
body  intact,  even  on  condition  that  he  lost 

60 


Our  Eternity 

all  memory  of  his  previous  life — would 
such  memories  not  be  useless? — which  of  us 
would  not  welcome  that  age-long  sleep  with 
the  same  confidence  as  the  brief,  gentle 
slumbers  of  his  every  night?  And  yet  be- 
tween real  death  and  this  sleep  there  would 
be  only  the  difference  of  that  awakening  de- 
ferred for  a  century,  an  awakening  as  alien 
to  the  sleeper  as  the  birth  of  a  posthumous 
child  would  be. 

Or  else,  to  say  very  much  what  Schopen- 
hauer said  to  one  who  was  unwilling  to 
admit  an  immortality  into  which  he  would 
not  carry  his  consciousness: 

"Suppose  that,  to  snatch  you  from  some 
intolerable  suffering,  you  were  promised  an 
awakening  and  a  return  to  consciousness 
after  a  wholly  unconscious  sleep  of  three 
months?" 

"I  would  accept  it  gladly." 

"But  suppose  that,  at  the  end  of  the  three 
months,  they  forgot  you  and  did  not  wake 

6i 


Our  Eternity 

you  until  ten  thousand  years  had  passed, 
how  much  the  wiser  would  you  be?  And, 
sleep  once  begun,  what  difference  does  it 
make  to  you  whether  it  last  for  three 
months  or  for  ever?" 

7 

Let  us  then  consider  that  all  that  com- 
poses our  consciousness  comes  first  of  all 
from  our  body.  Our  mind  does  but  organ- 
ize that  which  is  supplied  by  our  senses; 
and  even  the  images  and  the  words — which 
in  reality  are  but  images — by  the  aid  of 
which  it  strives  to  sever  itself  from  those 
senses  and  deny  their  sway  are  borrowed 
from  them.  How  could  that  mind  remain 
what  it  was,  when  it  has  nothing  left  of  that 
which  formed  it?  When  our  mind  no 
longer  has  a  body,  what  shall  it  carry  with 
it  into  infinity  whereby  to  recognize  itself, 
seeing  that  it  knows  itself  only  by  favour 
of  that  body?     A  few  memories  of  their 


Our  Eternity 

common  life?  Will  those  memories,  which 
were  already  fading  in  this  world,  suffice  to 
separate  it  for  ever  from  the  rest  of  the 
universe,  in  boundless  space  and  in  unlim- 
ited time? 

"But,"  I  shall  be  told,  "there  is  more  in 
us  than  our  intelligence  discovers.  We  have 
many  things  within  us  which  our  senses 
have  not  placed  there;  we  contain  a  greater 
being  than  the  one  we  know." 

That  is  probable,  nay,  certain :  the  share 
occupied  by  the  inconscient,  that  is  to  say, 
by  that  which  represents  the  universe,  is 
enormous  and  preponderant.  But  how  shall 
the  ego  which  we  know  and  whose  destiny 
alone  concerns  us  recognize  all  those  things 
and  that  greater  being  neither  of  which  it 
has  ever  known?  What  will  it  do  in  the 
presence  of  that  stranger?  If  I  be  told  that 
the  stranger  Is  myself,  T  will  readily  agree; 
but  was  that  which  upon  earth  felt  and 
weighed  my  joys   and   sorrows   and   gave 

63 


Our  Eternity 

birth  to  the  few  memories  and  thoughts 
that  remain  to  me,  was  that  this  impassive, 
unseen  stranger  who  existed  in  me  all  un- 
suspected, even  as  I  am  probably  about  to 
live  in  him  without  his  concerning  himself 
with  a  presence  that  will  bring  him  but  the 
sorry  recollection  of  a  thing  that  has  ceased 
to  be?  Now  that  he  has  taken  my  place, 
while  destroying,  in  order  to  acquire  a 
larger  consciousness,  all  that  formed  my 
small  consciousness  here  below,  is  it  not 
another  life  commencing,  a  life  whose  joys 
and  sorrows  will  pass  above  my  head,  not 
even  brushing  with  their  new-born  wings  the 
being  which  I  am  conscious  of  to-day? 

8 

Lastly,  how  shall  we  explain  that,  in  that 
consciousness  which  ought  to  survive  us,  the 
infinity  that  precedes  our  birth  has  left  no 
trace?  Had  we  no  consciousness  In  that 
infinity,   or   did  we   perchance  lose   it   on 

64 


Our  Eternity 

coming  into  the  world  and  did  the  cata- 
strophe that  produces  the  whole  terror  of 
death  take  place  at  the  moment  of  our 
birth?  None  can  deny  that  this  infinity 
has  the  same  rights  over  us  as  that  which 
follows  our  decease.  We  are  as  much  the 
children  of  the  first  as  of  the  second;  and 
we  must  of  necessity  have  a  part  in  both. 
If  you  maintain  that  you  will  always  exist, 
you  are  bound  to  admit  that  you  have 
always  existed;  we  cannot  imagine  the  one 
without  having  to  imagine  the  other.  If 
nothing  ends,  nothing  begins,  for  any  such 
beginning  will  be  the  end  of  something. 
Now,  although  I  have  existed  since  all  time, 
I  have  no  consciousness  whatever  of  my  pre- 
vious existence,  whereas  I  shall  have  to 
carry  to  the  boundless  horizon  of  the  endless 
ages  the  tiny  consciousness  acquired  during 
the  instant  that  elapses  between  my  birth 
and  my  death.  Can  my  true  ego,  then, 
which  is  about  to  become  eternal,  date  only 

65 


Our  Eternity 

from  my  short  sojourn  on  this  earth?  And 
all  the  preceding  eternity,  which  is  of 
exactly  the  same  value  as  that  which  fol- 
lows, since  it  is  the  same,  shall  i%  not  count? 
Will  it  be  flung  into  nihility?  Why  is  a 
strange  privilege  accorded  to  a  few  mean- 
ingless days  spent  on  an  unimportant 
planet?  Is  it  because  in  that  previous 
eternity  we  had  no  consciousness?  What 
do  we  know  about  it?  It  seems  very  un- 
likely. Why  should  the  acquisition  of  con- 
sciousness be  a  phenomenon  unrepeated  in 
an  eternity  that  had  at  its  disposal  innu- 
merable billions  of  chances,  among  which — 
unless  we  set  a  limit  to  the  infinity  of  the 
ages — it  is  Impossible  to  conceive  that  the 
thousands  of  coincidences  which  went  to 
form  my  present  consciousness  did  not  occur 
over  and  over  again  ?  The  moment  we  turn 
our  gaze  upon  the  mysteries  of  that  eternity 
wherein  all  that  happens  must  already  have 
happened,  it  seems  much  more  credible,  on 

66 


Our  Eternity 

the  contrary,  that  we  have  had  conscious- 
ness upon  consciousness  which  our  life  of 
to-day  hides  from  our  view.  If  they  have 
existed  and  if,  at  our  death,  one  conscious- 
ness must  survive,  the  others  must  survive 
as  well,  for  there  is  no  reason  to  bestow 
so  disproportionate  a  favour  upon  that  con- 
sciousness which  we  have  acquired  here  be- 
low. And,  if  all  of  them  survive  and 
awaken  at  the  same  time,  what  will  become 
of  the  petty  consciousness  of  a  few  terres- 
trial moments,  when  it  is  submerged  in 
those  eternal  existences?  Besides,  even  if  it 
were  to  forget  all  its  previous  existences, 
what  would  become  of  it  amid  the  perpetual 
buffeting,  the  endless  wash  of  its  posthu- 
mous eternity  ?  For  it  is  but  as  a  poor  sand- 
drift  of  an  island  in  the  unrelenting  jaws  of 
two  boundless  oceans.  It  would  hold  its 
own  there,  puny  and  so  precarious,  only  on 
condition  that  it  acquired  nothing  more, 
that  it  remained  for  ever  closed,  isolated 

67 


Our  Eternity 

j»nd  confined,  impenetrable  and  insensible  to 
all  things,  in  the  midst  of  the  astounding 
mysteries,  the  fabulous  treasures  and  visions 
which  it  would  have  eternally  to  pass 
through  without  ever  seeing  or  hearing  any- 
thing; and  that  surely  would  be  the  worst 
death  and  the  worst  destiny  that  could  be- 
fall us.  We  are,  therefore,  driven  on  all 
sides  toward  the  theories  of  an  universal 
consciousness  or  of  a  modified  consciousness, 
both  of  which  we  shall  examine  presently. 


68 


CHAPTER    IV 


THE     THEOSOPHICAL 
HYPOTHESIS 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE     THEOSOPHICAL 
HYPOTHESIS 


BUT,  before  broaching  those  questions, 
it  were  perhaps  well  to  study  two  in- 
teresting solutions  of  the  problem  of  per- 
sonal survival,  solutions  which,  although 
not  new,  have  at  least  been  lately  renewed. 
I  refer  to  the  neotheosophical  and  neo- 
spiritualistic  theories,  which  are,  I  think,  the 
only  ones  that  can  be  seriously  discussed. 
The  first  is  almost  as  old  as  man  himself; 
but  a  popular  movement,  of  some  magni- 
tude in  certain  countries,  has  rejuvenated 
the  doctrine  of  reincarnation,  or  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  and  brought  it  once 
more  into  prominence.     It  cannot  be  denied 

71 


Our  Eternity 

that,  of  all  the  religious  theories,  reincarna- 
tion is  the  most  plausible  and  the  least  re- 
pellent to  our  reason.  Nor  must  we  over- 
look that  It  has  on  Its  side  the  authority  of 
the  most  ancient  and  widespread  religions, 
those  which  have  incontestably  furnished 
humanity  with  the  greatest  aggregate  of 
wisdom  and  which  we  have  not  yet  ex- 
hausted of  their  truths  and  mysteries.  In 
reality,  the  whole  of  Asia,  whence  we  derive 
almost  everything  which  we  know,  has 
always  believed  and  still  believes  in  the 
transmigration  of  souls. 

As  Mrs.  Annie  Besant,  the  remarkable 
apostle  of  the  new  theosophy,  very  rightly 
says: 

"There  is  no  philosophical  doctrine  which 
has  behind  It  so  magnificent  an  Intellectual 
ancestry  as  the  doctrine  of  reincarnation; 
none  for  which  there  is  such  a  weight  of  the 
opinion  of  the  wisest  of  men ;  none,  as  Max 
Miiller   declared,    on    which    the   greatest 

72 


Our  Eternity 

philosophers    of    humanity    have    been    so 
thoroughly  in  accord." 

This  is  all  quite  true.  But  it  would  need 
other  proofs  to  win  our  distrustful  faith 
to-day.  I  have  sought  in  vain  for  a  single 
one  in  the  leading  works  of  our  modern 
theosophists.  They  confine  themselves  to  a 
mere  reiteration  of  dogmatic  statements, 
which  are  of  the  vaguest.  Their  great 
argument — the  chief  and,  when  all  is  said, 
the  only  argument  which  they  adduce — is 
but  a  sentimental  argument.  Their  doctrine 
that  the  soul,  in  its  successive  existences,  is 
purified  and  exalted  with  more  or  less  rapid- 
ity according  to  Its  efforts  and  deserts  Is, 
they  maintain,  the  only  one  that  satisfies  the 
irresistible  instinct  of  justice  which  we  bear 
within  us.  They  are  right;  and,  from  this 
point  of  view,  their  posthumous  justice  is 
Immeasurably  superior  to  that  of  the  bar- 
baric Heaven  and  the  monstrous  Hell  of  the 
Christians,  where  rewards  and  punishments 

71 


Our  Eternity 

are  for  ever  meted  out  to  virtues  and  vices 
which  are  for  the  most  part  puerile,  un- 
avoidable or  accidental.  But  this,  I  repeat, 
is  only  a  sentimental  argument,  which  has 
but  an  infinitesimal  value  in  the  scale  of  evi- 
dence. 


We  may  admit  that  certain  of  their 
theories  are  rather  ingenious;  and  what  they 
say  of  the  part  played  by  the  "shells,"  for 
instance,  or  the  "elementals,"  in  the  spirit- 
ualistic phenomena,  is  worth  about  as  much 
as  our  clumsy  explanations  of  fluidic  and 
supersensible  bodies.  Perhaps,  or  even  no 
doubt,  they  are  right  when  they  insist  that 
everything  around  us  is  full  of  living,  sen- 
tient forms,  of  diverse  and  innumerous 
types,  "as  different  from  one  another  as  a 
blade  of  grass  and  a  tiger,  or  a  tiger  and 
a  man,"  which  are  incessantly  brushing 
against  us  and  through  which  we  pass  un- 

74 


Our  Eternity 

awares.  If  all  the  religions  have  overpopu- 
lated  the  world  with  invisible  beings,  we 
have  perhaps  depopulated  it  too  completely; 
and  it  is  extremely  possible  that  we  shall 
find  one  day  that  the  mistake  was  not  on 
the  side  which  one  imagines.  As  Sir 
William  Crookes  so  well  puts  it,  in  a  re- 
markable passage : 

"It  Is  not  improbable  that  other  sentient 
beings  have  organs  of  sense  which  do  not 
respond  to  some  or  any  of  the  rays  to  which 
our  eyes  are  sensitive,  but  are  able  to  ap- 
preciate other  vibrations  to  which  we  are 
blind.  Such  beings  would  practically  be 
living  in  a  different  world  to  our  own. 
Imagine,  for  instance,  what  idea  we  should 
form  of  surrounding  objects  were  we  en- 
dowed with  eyes  not  sensitive  to  the  ordi- 
nary rays  of  light,  but  sensitive  to  the  vibra- 
tions concerned  in  electric  and  magnetic 
phenomena.  Glass  and  crystal  would  be 
among  the  most  opaque  of  bodies.    Metals 

75 


Our  Eternity 

would  be  more  or  less  transparent,  and  a 
telegraph  wire  through  the  air  would  look 
like  a  long  narrow  hole  drilled  through 
an  impervious  solid  body.  A  dynamo  in 
active  work  would  resemble  a  conflagration, 
whilst  a  permanent  magnet  would  realize 
the  dream  of  mediaeval  mystics  and  become 
an  everlasting  lamp  with  no  expenditure  of 
energy  or  consumption  of  fuel." 

All  this,  with  so  many  other  things  which 
they  assert,  would  be,  if  not  admissible,  at 
least  worthy  of  attention,  if  those  suppo- 
sitions were  offered  for  what  they  are,  that 
is  to  say,  very  ancient  hypotheses  that  go 
back  to  the  early  ages  of  human  theology 
and  metaphysics ;  but,  when  they  are  trans- 
formed into  categorical  and  dogmatic  asser- 
tions, they  at  once  become  untenable:  Their 
exponents  promise  us,  on  the  other  hand, 
that,  by  exercising  our  minds,  by  refining 
our  senses,  by  etherealizing  our  bodies,  we 
shall  be  able  to  live  with  those  whom  we 

76 


Our  Eternity 

call  dead  and  with  the  higher  beings  that 
surround  us.  It  all  seems  to  lead  to  nothing 
much  and  rests  on  very  frail  bases,  on 
very  vague  proofs  derived  from  hypnotic 
sleep,  presentiments,  mediumism,  phan- 
tasms and  so  forth.  It  is  rather  surprising 
that  those  who  call  themselves  "clairvoy- 
ants,'' who  pretend  to  be  in  communication 
with  this  world  of  discarnate  spirits  and 
with  other  worlds  still  nearer  to  the  divine, 
should  bring  us  no  evidential  proofs.  We 
want  something  more  than  arbitrary 
theories  about  the  "immortal  triad,"  the 
"three  worlds,"  the  "astral  body,"  the 
"permanent  atom,"  or  the  "Karma-Loka." 
As  their  sensibility  is  keener,  their  percep-« 
tion  subtler,  their  spiritual  intuition  more 
penetrating  than  ours,  why  do  they  not 
choose  as  a  field  for  investigation  the  phe- 
nomena of  prenatal  memory,  for  instance, 
to  take  one  subject  at  random  from  a  mul- 
titude    of     others,     phenomena      which, 

77 


Our  Eternity 

although  sporadic  and  open  to  question,  are 
still  admissible?  We  are  only  too  eager 
to  allow  ourselves  to  be  convinced,  for  all 
that  adds  anything  to  man's  importance, 
range  or  duration  must  needs  be  gladly 
welcomed.^ 

*To  learn  the  precise  truth  about  the  neotheosophical 
movement  and  its  first  manifestations,  the  reader 
should  study  the  striking  report  drawn  up,  after  an 
impartial,  but  strict  inquiry,  by  Dr.  Hodgson,  who  was 
sent  to  India  for  this  special  purpose  by  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research.  In  it  he  unveils,  in  a  masterly 
fashion,  the  obvious  and  often  clumsy  impositions  of 
the  famous  Mme.  Blavatsky  and  the  whole  neotheo- 
sophical organization  {Proceedings,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  201- 
400:  Hodgson's  Report  on  Phenomena  connected  nmth 
Theosophy). 


78 


CHAPTER   V 


THE       N  E  O  S  P  I  R  1  T  U  A  L  I  S  T  I  C 
HYPOTHESIS:    APPARITIONS 


CHAPTER  V 

THE      N EO S P I R  I  T U A  L I  ST  I  C 

HYPOTHESIS:   apparitions 


OUTSIDE  theosophy,  investigations  of 
a  purely  scientific  nature  have  been 
made  in  the  baffling  regions  of  survival  and 
reincarnation.  Neospiritualism,  or  psychic- 
ism  or  experimental  spiritualism,  had  its 
origin  in  America  in  1870.  In  the  follow- 
ing year,  the  first  strictly  scientific  experi- 
ments were  organized  by  Sir  William 
Crookes,  the  man  of  genius  who  opened  up 
most  of  the  roads  at  the  end  of  which  men 
were  astounded  to  discover  unknown  prop- 
erties and  conditions  of  matter;  and,  as 
early  as  1873  or  1874,  he  obtained,  with 
the  aid  of  the  medium  Florence  Cook,  phe- 

81 


Our  Eternity 

nomena  of  materialization  that  have  hardly 
been  surpassed.  But  the  real  inauguration 
of  the  new  science  dates  from  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
familiarly  known  as  the  S.P.R.  This  society 
was  formed  in  London,  twenty-eight  years 
ago,  under  the  auspices  of  the  most  distin- 
guished men  of  science  in  England,  and  has, 
as  we  know,  made  a  methodical  and  strict 
study  of  every  case  of  supernormal  psycho- 
logy and  sensibility.  This  study  or  investi- 
gation, originally  conducted  by  Edmund 
Gurney,  F.  W.  H.  Myers  and  Frank  Pod- 
more  and  continued  by  their  successors,  is 
a  masterpiece  of  scientific  patience  and  con- 
scientiousness. Not  an  incident  is  admitted 
that  is  not  supported  by  unimpeachable 
testimony,  by  definite  written  records  and 
convincing  corroboration;  in  a  word,  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  contest  the  essential 
veracity  of  the  majority  of  them,  unless  we 
begin  by  making  up  our  minds  to  deny  any 

82 


Our  Eternity 

positive  value  to  human  evidence  and  by 
making  any  conviction,  any  certainty  im- 
possible that  derives  its  source  therefrom/ 
Among  those  supernormal  manifestations, 
telepathy,  telergy,  previsions  and  so  forth, 
we  will  take  cognizance  only  of  those  which 
relate  to  life  beyond  the  grave.  They  can 
be  divided  Into  two  categories :  ( i )  real, 
objective  and  spontaneous  apparitions,  or 
direct  manifestations;  (2)  manifestations 
obtained  by  the  agency  of  mediums,  whether 
induced  apparitions,  which  we  will  put  aside 
for  the  mom.ent  because  of  their  frequently 
questionable  character,^  or  communications 

^  How  strict  these  investigations  arc  is  shown  by  the 
perpetual  attacks  on  the  S.P.R.  in  the  spiritualistic 
press,  which  constantly  refers  to  it  as  the  Society  "for 
the  suppression  of  facts,"  "for  the  wholesale  imputation 
of  imposture,"  "for  the  discouragement  of  the  sensitive 
and  for  the  repudiation  of  every  revelation  of  the  kind 
which  was  said  to  be  pressing  itself  upon  humanity 
from  the  regions  of  light  and  knowledge." 

'  It  would,  however,  be  unjust  to  assert  that  all  these 
apparitions  are  open  to  question.  For  instance,  it  is 
impossible  to  deny  the  reality  of  the  celebrated  Katie 
King,  the  double  of  Florence  Cook,  whose  actions  and 
movements  were  rigorously  investigated  and  controlled 
by  a  man  like  Sir  William  Crookes  for  a  period  of 
three  years.    But,  looked  upon  as  a  proof  of  survival — 

83 


Our  Eternity 

with  the  dead  by  word  of  mouth  or  auto- 
matic writing.  We  will  stop  for  a  moment 
to  consider  those  extraordinary  communi- 
cations. They  have  been  studied  at  length 
by  such  men  as  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  Richard 
Hodgson,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  the  phi- 
losopher William  James,  the  father  of  the 
new  pragmatism ;  they  profoundly  im- 
pressed and  almost  convinced  these  men; 
and  they  therefore  deserve  to  arrest  our 
attention. 


As  concerns  the  manifestations  of  the  first 
category,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  give 
even  a  summary  account  of  the  most  strik- 

notwithstanding  that  Katie  King  professed  to  be  a  dead 
person  who  had  returned  to  earth  to  expiate  certain 
sins — her  manifestations  are  not  so  valuable  as  the 
communications  obtained  since  her  time.  In  any  case, 
they  bring  us  no  revelation  concerning  existence  beyond 
the  grave;  and  Katie,  who  was  so  young,  so  much 
alive,  whose  pulsations  could  be  counted,  whose  heart 
was  heard  beating,  who  was  photographed,  who  dis- 
tributed locks  of  her  hair  to  those  present,  who  replied 
to  every  question  put  to  her,  Katie  herself  never  uttered 
a  word  on  the  subject  of  the  secrets  of  the  next  world. 

'     84 


Our  Eternity 

ing  of  them  in  these  pages;  and  I  refer  the 
reader  to  the  volumes  of  the  Proceedings. 
It  is  enough  to  remember  that  numerous 
apparitions  of  deceased  persons  have  been 
investigated  and  studied  by  men  of  science 
hke  Sir  William  Crookes,  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace,  Robert  Dale  Owen,  Professor 
Aksakof,  Paul  Gibier  and  others.  Gurney, 
who  is  one  of  the  classics  of  this  new  science, 
gives  two  hundred  and  thirty  instances  of 
this  sort;  and,  since  then,  the  Journal  of  the 
S.P.R.  and  the  spiritualistic  reviews  have 
never  ceased  to  record  new  ones.  It  appears 
therefore  to  be  as  well  established  as  a  fact 
can  be  that  a  spiritual  or  nervous  shape,  an 
image,  a  belated  reflexion  of  life,  is  capable 
of  subsisting  for  some  time,  of  releasing 
itself  from  the  body,  of  surviving  it,  of 
traversing  enormous  distances  in  the  twink- 
ling of  an  eye,  of  manifesting  itself  to  the 
living  and,  sometimes,  of  communicating 
with  them. 

85 


Our  Eternity 

For  the  rest,  we  have  to  recognize  that 
these  apparitions  are  very  brief.  They  only 
take  place  at  the  precise  moment  of  death 
or  follow  very  shortly  after.  They  do  not 
seem  to  have  the  least  consciousness  of  a 
new  or  superterrestrial  life  differing  from 
that  of  the  body  whence  they  issue.  On  the 
contrary,  their  spiritual  energy,  at  a  time 
when  it  ought  to  be  absolutely  pure,  because 
it  is  rid  of  matter,  seems  greatly  inferior  to 
what  it  was  when  matter  surrounded  it. 
These  more  or  less  uneasy  phantasms^ 
often  tormented  with  trivial  cares,  have 
never,  although  they  come  from  another 
world,  brought  us  one  single  revelation  of 
topical  interest  concerning  that  world  whose 
prodigious  threshold  they  have  crossed. 
Soon,  they  fade  away  and  disappear  for 
ever.  Are  they  the  first  glimmers  of  a  new 
existence  or  the  final  glimmers  of  the  old? 
Do  the  dead  thus  use,  for  want  of  a  better, 
the  last  link  that  binds  them  and  makes 

86 


Our  Eternity 

them  perceptible  to  our  senses?  Do  they 
afterwards  go  on  living  around  us,  without 
again  succeeding,  in  spite  of  their  endea- 
vours, in  making  themselves  known  or  giv- 
ing us  an  idea  of  their  presence,  because  we 
have  not  the  organ  that  is  necessary  to  per- 
ceive them,  even  as  all  our  endeavours 
would  not  succeed  in  giving  a  man  who  was 
blind  from  birth  the  least  notion  of  light 
and  colour?  We  do  not  know  at  all;  nor 
can  we  tell  whether  it  be  permissible  to  draw 
any  conclusion  from  all  these  incontestable 
phenomena.  They  would  really  assume  im- 
portance only  if  it  were  possible  to  verify  or 
to  induce  apparitions  of  beings  whose  death 
dated  back  a  certain  number  of  years.  We 
should  then  at  last  have  the  positive  proof, 
which  has  always  escaped  us  hitherto,  that 
the  spirit  is  independent  of  the  body,  that  it 
is  cause,  not  effect,  that  it  can  thrive,  find 
sustenance  and  perform  its  functions  with- 
out  organs.      The   greatest   question   that 

87 


Our  Eternity 

humanity  has  ever  set  itself  would  thus  be, 
if  not  solved,  at  least  rid  of  some  of  its 
obscurity;  and,  forthwith,  personal  survival, 
while  continuing  to  be  wrapped  in  the  mys- 
teries of  the  beginning  and  the  end,  would 
become  defensible.  But  we  have  not  yet 
reached  that  stage.  Meanwhile,  it  is  inter- 
esting to  observe  that  there  really  are 
ghosts,  spectres  and  phantoms.  Once  again, 
science  steps  in  to  confirm  a  general  belief 
of  mankind  and  to  teach  us  that  a  belief  of 
this  sort,  however  absurd  it  may  at  first 
seem,  still  deserves  careful  examination. 


88 


CHAPTER    VI 


COMMUNICATIONS     WITH     THE 

DEAD 


CHAPTER    VI 

COMMUNICATION    WITH    THE 
DEAD 


THE  spiritualists  communicate  or  think 
that  they  communicate  with  the  dead 
by  means  of  what  they  call  automatic  speech 
and  writing.  These  are  obtained  by  the 
agency  of  a  medium^  in  a  state  of  ecstasy  or 

^  Those  who  take  up  the  study  of  these  supernormal 
manifestations  usually  ask  themselves: 

"Why  mediums?  Why  make  use  of  these  often 
questionable  and  always  inadequate  intermediaries?" 

The  reason  is  that,  hitherto,  no  way  has  been  dis- 
covered of  doing  without  them.  If  we  admit  the 
spiritualistic  theory,  the  discarnate  spirits  which  sur- 
round us  on  every  side  and  which  are  separated  from 
us  by  the  impenetrable  and  mysterious  wall  of  death 
seek,  in  order  to  communicate  with  us,  the  line  of  least 
resistance  between  the  two  worlds  and  find  it  in  the 
medium,  without  our  knowing  why,  even  as  we  do  not 
know  why  an  electric  current  passes  along  copper  wire 
and  is  stopped  by  glass  or  porcelain.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  admit  the  telepathic  hypothesis,  which  is  the 
more  probable,  we  observe  that  the  thoughts,  intentions 
or  suggestions  transmitted  are,  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
not  conveyed  from  one  subconscious  intelligence  to  an- 
other.    There  is  need  of  an  organism  that  is,  at  the 

91 


Our  Eternity 

rather  of  "trance,"  to  employ  the  vocabu- 
lary of  the  new  science.  This  condition  is 
not  one  of  hypnotic  sleep,  nor  does  it  seem 
to  be  an  hysterical  manifestation;  it  is  often 
associated,  as  in  the  case  of  the  medium 
Mrs.  Piper,  with  perfect  health  and  com- 
plete intellectual  and  physical  balance.  It  is 
rather  the  more  or  less  voluntary  emergence 
of  a  second  or  subliminal  personality  or 
consciousness  of  the  medium;  or,  if  we 
admit  the  spiritualistic  hypothesis,  his  occu- 
pation, his  "psychic  invasion,"  as  Myers 
calls  it,  by  forces  from  another  world.  In 
the  "entranced"  subject,  the  normal  con- 
sciousness and  personality  are  entirely  done 

came  time,  a  receiver  and  a  transmitter;  and  this 
organism  is  found  in  the  medium.  Why?  Once  more, 
we  know  absolutely  nothing  about  it,  even  as  we  do 
not  know  why  one  body  or  combination  of  bodies  is 
sensitive  to  concentric  waves  in  wireless  telegraphy, 
while  another  is  not  affected  by  it.  We  here  grope, 
as,  for  that  matter,  we  grope  almost  everywhere,  in  the 
obscure  domain  of  undisputed,  but  inexplicable  facts. 
Those  who  care  to  possess  more  precise  notions  on  the 
theory  of  mediumism  will  do  well  to  read  the  ad- 
mirable address  delivered  by  Sir  William  Crookes,  as 
president  of  the  S.P.R.,  on  the  29th  of  January,  1897. 

92 


Our  Eternity 

away  with;  and  he  replies  "automatically," 
sometimes  by  word  of  mouth,  more  often  in 
writing,  to  the  questions  put  to  him.  It  has 
happened  that  he  speaks  and  writes  simul- 
taneously, his  voice  being  occupied  by  one 
spirit  and  his  hand  by  another,  who  thus 
carry  on  two  independent  conversations. 
More  rarely,  the  voice  and  the  two  hands 
are  "possessed"  at  one  and  the  same  time; 
and  we  receive  three  different  communica- 
tions. Obviously,  manifestations  of  this 
sort  lend  themselves  to  frauds  and  im- 
postures of  every  kind ;  and  the  distrust 
aroused  is  at  first  invincible.  But  there  are 
some  that  make  their  appearance  encom- 
passed with  such  guarantees  of  good  faith 
and  sincerity,  so  often,  so  long  and  so 
rigorously  checked  by  scientific  men  of  un- 
impeachable character  and  authority  and  of 
originally  inflexible  scepticism  that  it  be- 
comes difficult  to  maintain  a  suspicion  at 


93 


Our  Eternity 

the  finish/  Unfortunately,  I  am  not  able 
to  enter  here  into  the  details  of  some  of 
these  purely  scientific  sittings,  those,  for 
Instance,  of  Mrs.  Piper,  the  famous  medium 
with  whom  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  Richard 
Hodgson,  Professor  Newbold,  of  the  Unl- 

^  These  questions  of  fraud  and  imposture  are  natural- 
ly the  first  that  suggest  themselves  when  we  begin 
to  study  these  phenomena.  But  the  slightest  acquaint- 
ance with  the  life,  habits  and  proceedings  of  the  three 
or  four  great  mediums  of  whom  we  are  going  to  speak 
is  quite  sufficient  to  remove  even  the  faintest  shadow  of 
suspicion.  Of  all  the  explanations  conceivable,  that  one 
which  attributes  everything  to  imposture  and  trickery 
is  unquestionably  the  most  extraordinary  and  the  least 
probable.  Moreover^  by  reading  Richard  Hodgson's 
report,  entitled  Observations  of  Certain  Phenomena  of 
Trance  (Proceedings,  Vols.  VIII.  and  XIII.;  and  also 
J.  H.  Hyslop's  report.  Vol.  XVI.),  we  can  observe  the 
precautions  taken,  even  to  the  extent  of  employing 
special  detectives,  to  make  certain  that  Mrs.  Piper,  for 
instance,  was  unable,  normally  and  humanly  speaking, 
to  have  any  knowledge  of  the  facts  which  she  revealed. 
I  repeat,  from  the  moment  that  one  enters  upon  this 
study,  all  suspicions  are  dispelled  without  leaving  a  trace 
behind  them;  and  we  are  soon  convinced  that  the  key 
to  the  riddle  must  not  be  sought  in  imposture.  All  the 
manifestations  of  the  dumb,  mysterious  and  oppressed 
personality  that  lies  concealed  in  every  one  of  us  have 
to  undergo  the  same  ordeal  in  their  turn;  and  those 
which  relate  to  the  divining-rod,  to  name  no  others, 
are  at  this  moment  passing  through  the  same  crisis  of 
incredulity.  Less  than  fifty  years  ago,  the  majority  of 
the  hypnotic  phenomena  which  are  now  scientifically 
classified  were  likewise  looked  upon  as  fraudulent.  It 
seems  that  man  is  loth  to  admit  that  there  lie  within 
him  many  more  things  than  he  imagined. 

94 


Our  Eternity 

versity  of  Pennsylvania,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge 
and  William  James  worked  during  a  num- 
ber of  years.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  pre- 
cisely the  accumulation  and  coincidences  of 
these  abnormal  details  which  gradually 
produce  and  confirm  the  conviction  that  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  an  entirely  new,  im- 
'  probable,  but  genuine  phenomenon,  which  is 
sometimes  difficult  of  classification  among 
exclusively  terrestrial  phenomena.  I  should 
have  to  devote  to  these  "communications"  a 
special  study  which  would  exceed  the  limits 
of  this  essay;  and  I  will  therefore  content 
myself  with  referring  those  who  care  to 
know  more  of  the  subject  to  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge's  book,  The  Survival  of  Man,  re- 
cently translated  into  French  under  the  title 
of  La  Survivance  huma'ine;  and,  above  all, 
to  the  twenty-five  bulky  volumes  of  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  S.P.R.,  notably  to  the  report 
and  comments  of  William  James  on  the 
Piper-Hodgson  sittings  in  Vol.  XXIIL  and 

95 


Our  Eternity 

to  Vol.  XIII. ,  where  Hodgson  examines  the 
facts  and  arguments  that  may  be  adduced 
for  or  against  the  agency  of  the  dead;  and, 
lastly,  to  Myers'  great  work,  Human 
Personality  and  its  Survival  after  Bodily 
Death. 


The  "entranced"  mediums  are  Invaded  or 
possessed  by  different  familiar  spirits,  to 
whom  the  new  science  gives  the  somewhat 
Inappropriate  and  ambiguous  name  of 
"controls."  Thus,  Mrs.  Piper  Is  visited  In 
succession  by  Phlnult,  George  Pelham,  or 
"G.P.,"  Imperator,  Doctor  and  Rector. 
Mrs.  Thompson,  another  very  celebrated 
medium,  has  Nelly  for  her  usual  tenant, 
while  graver  and  more  Illustrious  person- 
ages would  take  possession  of  Stalnton 
Moses,  the  clergyman.  Each  of  these 
spirits  retains  a  sharply  defined  character, 
which  Is  consistent  throughout  and  which, 

96 


Our  Eternity 

moreover,  for  the  most  part,  bears  no  rela- 
tion to  that  of  the  medium.  Amongst  these, 
Phinuit  and  Nelly  are  undoubtedly  the  most 
attractive,  the  most  original,  the  most  liv- 
ing, the  most  active  and,  above  all,  the  most 
talkative.  They  centralize  the  communica- 
tions after  a  fashion ;  they  come  and  go 
officiously;  and,  should  any  one  of  those 
present  wish  to  be  brought  into  touch  with 
the  soul  of  a  deceased  kinsman  or  friend, 
they  fly  in  search  of  it,  find  it  amid  the  in- 
visible throng,  usher  it  in,  announce  its 
presence,  speak  in  its  name,  transmit  and, 
so  to  speak,  translate  the  questions  and  re- 
plies; for  it  seems  that  it  is  very  difficult 
for  the  dead  to  communicate  with  the  liv- 
ing and  that  they  need  special  aptitudes 
and  a  concurrence  of  extraordinary  circum- 
stances. We  will  not  yet  examine  vi'hat 
they  have  to  reveal  to  us;  but  to  see  them 
thus  fluttering  to  and  fro  amid  the  multi- 
tude of  their  discarnate  brothers  and  sis- 

97 


Our  Eternity 

ters  gives  us  a  first  impression  of  the  next 
world  which  is  none  too  reasurring;  and 
we  say  to  ourselves  that  the  dead  of  to-day- 
are  strangely  like  those  whom  Ulysses  con- 
jured up  out  of  the  Cimmerian  darkness 
three  thousand  years  ago:  pale  and  empty 
shades,  bewildered,  incoherent,  puerile  and 
terror-stricken,  like  unto  dreams,  more 
numerous  than  the  leaves  that  fall  in 
autumn  and  like  them,  trembling  in  the 
unknown  winds  from  the  vast  plains  of 
the  other  world.  They  no  longer  even  have 
enough  life  to  be  unhappy  and  seem  to  drag 
out,  we  know  not  where,  a  precarious  and 
idle  existence,  to  wander  aimlessly,  to  hover 
round  us,  slumbering  or  chattering  among 
one  another  of  the  minor  matters  of  the 
world;  and,  when  a  gap  Is  made  in  their 
darkness,  to  come  up  in  haste  from  all  sides, 
like  flocks  of  famished  birds,  hungering  for 
light  and  the  sound  of  a  human  voice.  And, 
in    spite   of   ourselves,    we    think   of   the 

98 


Our  Eternity 

Odyssey  and  the  sinister  words  of  the  shade 
of  Achilles  as  it  issued  from  Erebus : 

"Do  not,  O  illustrious  Ulysses,  speak  to 
me  of  death;  I  would  wish,  being  on  earth, 
to  serve  for  hire  with  another  man  of  no 
estate,  who  had  not  much  livelihood,  rather 
than  rule  over  all  the  departed  dead." 

3 

What  have  these  latter-day  dead  to  tell 
us  ?  To  begin  with,  it  is  a  remarkable  thing 
that  they  appear  to  be  much  more  interested 
in  events  here  below  than  in  those  of  the 
world  wherein  they  move.  They  seem, 
above  all,  jealous  to  establish  their  identity, 
to  prove  that  they  still  exist,  that  they  recog- 
nize us,  that  they  know  everything;  and,  to 
convince  us  of  this,  they  enter  into  the  most 
minute  and  forgotten  details  with  extraordi- 
nary precision,  perspicacity  and  prolixity. 
They  are  also  extremely  clever  at  unravel- 
ling the  intricate  family  connections  of  the 

99 


Our  Eternity 

person  actually  questioning  them,  of  any  of 
the  sitters,  or  even  of  a  stranger  entering 
the  room.  They  recall  this  one's  little  in- 
firmities, that  one's  maladies,  the  eccentrici- 
ties or  tendencies  of  a  third.  They  have 
cognizance  of  events  taking  place  at  a  dis- 
tance :  they  see,  for  instance,  and  describe 
to  their  hearers  in  London  an  insignificant 
episode  in  Canada.  In  a  word,  they  say  and 
do  more  or  less  all  the  disconcerting  and 
inexplicable  things  that  are  sometimes 
obtained  from  a  first-rate  medium;  perhaps 
they  even  go  a  little  further;  but  there 
comes  from  it  all  no  breath,  no  glimmer 
of  the  hereafter,  not  even  the  something 
vaguely  promised  and  vaguely  waited  for. 
We  shall  be  told  that  the  mediums  are 
visited  only  by  inferior  spirits,  incapable  of 
tearing  themselves  from  earthly  cares  and 
soaring  toward  greater  and  loftier  ideas. 
It  is  possible ;  and  no  doubt  we  are  wrong  to 
believe  that  a  spirit  stripped  of  its  body  can 


100 


Our  Eternity 

suddenly  be  transformed  and  reach,  In  a 
moment,  the  level  of  our  Imaginings;  but 
could  they  not  at  least  Inform  us  where  they 
are,  what  they  feel  and  what  they  do? 

4 

And  now  It  seems  that  death  Itself  has 
elected  to  answer  these  objections.  Frederic 
Myers,  Richard  Hodgson  and  William 
James,  who  so  often,  for  long  and  ardent 
hours,  questioned  Mrs.  Piper  and  Mrs. 
Thompson,  and  obliged  the  departed  to 
speak  by  their  mouths,  are  now  themselves 
among  the  shades,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
curtain  of  darkness.  They  at  least  knew 
exactly  what  to  do  In  order  to  reach  us,  what 
to  reveal  In  order  to  allay  men's  uneasy  curi- 
osity. Myers  In  particular,  the  most  ardent, 
the  most  convinced,  the  most  impatient  of 
the  veil  that  parted  him  from  the  eternal 
realities,  formally  promised  those  who  were 
continuing  his  work  that  he  would  make 

101 


Our  Eternity 

every  imaginable  effort  out  yonder,  in  the 
unknown,  to  come  to  their  aid  in  a  decisive 
fashion.  He  kept  his  word.  A  month  after 
his  death,  when  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  was 
questioning  Mrs.  Thompson  in  her  trance, 
Nelly,  the  medium's  familiar  spirit,  sud- 
denly declared  that  she  had  seen  Myers, 
that  he  was  not  yet  fully  awake,  but  that  he 
hoped  to  come,  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  even- 
ing, and  "communicate"  with  his  old  friend 
of  the  Psychical  Society. 

The  sitting  was  suspended  and  resumed 
at  half-past  eight;  and  Myers'  "communi- 
cation" was  at  last  obtained.  He  was 
recognized  by  the  first  few  words  he  spoke ; 
it  was  really  he;  he  had  not  changed. 
Faithful  to  his  idiosyncracy  when  on  earth, 
he  at  once  insisted  on  the  necessity  for 
taking  notes.  But  he  seemed  dazed.  They 
spoke  to  him  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  the  sole  interest  of  his  life.  He 
had  lost  all  recollection  of  it.    Then  mem- 

102 


Our  Eternity 

ory  gradually  revived;  and  there  followed  a 
quantity  of  post-mortem  gossip  on  the 
subject  of  the  society's  next  president,  the 
obituary  articles  In  the  Times,  the  letters 
that  should  be  published,  and  so  on.  He 
complained  that  people  would  not  let  him 
rest,  that  there  was  not  a  place  In  England 
where  they  did  not  ask  for  him : 
"Call  Myers!  Bring  Myers!" 
He  ought  to  be  given  time  to  collect  him- 
self, to  reflect.  He  also  complained  of  the 
difficulty  of  conveying  his  Ideas  through  the 
mediums:  "they  were  translating  like  a 
schoolboy  does  his  first  lines  of  Virgil."^  As 
for  his  present  condition,  "he  groped  his 
way  as  If  through  passages,  before  he  knew 
he  was  dead.  He  thought  he  had  lost  his 
way  In  a  strange  town  .  .  .  and,  even  when 
he  saw  people  that  he  knew  were  dead,  he 
thought  they  were  only  visions." 

'  In  this  and  other  "communications,"  I  have  quoted 
actual  English  words  employed,  wherever  1  have  been 
able  to  discover  them. — Translator. 

103 


Our  Eternity 

This,  together  with  more  chatter  of  a  no 
less  trivial  nature,  is  about  all  that  was  ob- 
tained from  Myers'  "control"  or  "im- 
personation," of  which  better  things  had 
been  expected.  The  "communication"  and 
many  others  which,  it  appears,  recall  in 
a  striking  fashion  Myers'  habits,  character 
and  ways  of  thinking  and  speaking,  would 
possess  some  value  if  none  of  those  by  whom 
or  to  whom  they  were  made  had  been  ac- 
quainted with  him  at  the  time  when  he 
was  still  numbered  among  the  living.  As 
they  stand,  they  are  most  probably  but 
reminiscences  of  a  secondary  personality  of 
the  medium  or  unconscious  suggestions  of 
the  questioner  or  the  sitters. 

5 

A  more  important  communication  and  a 
more  perplexing,  because  of  the  names 
connected  with  it,  is  that  which  is  known 
as  "Mrs.  Piper's  Hodgson-Control."    Pro- 

I04 


Our  Eternity 

fessor  William  James  devotes  an  account  of 
over  a  hundred  and  twenty  pages  to  It  in 
Vol.  XXII I.  of  the  Proceedings.  Dr. 
Hodgson,  in  his  lifetime,  was  secretary  of 
the  American  branch  of  the  S.P.R.,  of 
which  William  James  was  vice-president. 
For  many  years,  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
medium  Mrs.  Piper,  working  with  her  twice 
a  week  and  thus  accumulating  an  enormous 
mass  of  documents  on  the  subject  of  posthu- 
mous manifestations,  a  mass  whose  wealth 
has  not  yet  been  exhausted.  Like  Myers, 
he  had  promised  to  come  back  after  his 
death;  and,  in  his  jovial  way,  he  had  more 
than  once  declared  to  Mrs.  Piper  that,  when 
he  came  to  visit  her  in  his  turn,  as  he  had 
more  experience  than  the  other  spirits,  the 
sittings  would  take  a  more  decisive  turn 
and  that  "he  would  make  it  hot  for  them." 
He  did  come  back,  a  week  after  his  death, 
and  manifested  himself  by  automatic  writ- 
ing  (which,  with  Mrs.  Piper  as  medium, 

105 


Our  Eternity 

was  the  most  usual  method  of  communica" 
tion)  during  several  sittings  at  which 
William  James  was  present.  I  should  like 
to  give  an  idea  of  these  manifestations. 
But,  as  the  celebrated  Harvard  professor 
very  truly  observes,  the  shorthand  report 
of  a  sitting  of  this  kind  at  once  alters  its 
aspect  from  start  to  finish.  We  seek  in  vain 
for  the  emotion  experienced  on  thus  finding 
one's  self  in  the  presence  of  an  invisible  but 
living  being,  who  not  only  answers  your 
questions,  but  anticipates  your  thoughts, 
understands  before  you  have  finished  speak- 
ing, grasps  an  allusion  and  caps  it  with 
another  allusion,  grave  or  smiling.  The  life 
of  the  dead  man,  which,  during  a  strange 
hour,  had,  so  to  speak,  surrounded  and 
penetrated  you,  seems  to  be  extinguished  for 
the  second  time.  Stenography,  which  Is  de- 
void of  all  emotion,  no  doubt  supplies  the 
best  elements  for  arriving  at  a  logical  con- 
clusion ;  but  it  is  not  certain  that  here,  as  In 

io6 


Our  Eternity 

many  other  cases  where  the  unknown  pre- 
dominates, logic  is  the  only  road  that  leads 
to  the  truth. 

"When  I  first  undertook,"  says  William 
James,  "to  collate  this  series  of  sittings  and 
make  the  present  report,  I  supposed  that 
my  verdict  would  be  determined  by  pure 
logic.  Certain  minute  incidents,  I  thought, 
ought  to  make  for  spirit-return  or  against  it 
in  a  'crucial'  way.  But  watching  my  mind 
work  as  it  goes  over  the  data  convinces  me 
that  exact  logic  plays  only  a  preparatory 
part  in  shaping  our  conclusions  here;  and 
that  the  decisive  vote,  if  there  be  one,  has  to 
be  cast  by  what  I  may  call  one's  general 
sense  of  dramatic  probability,  which  sense 
ebbs  and  flows  from  one  hypothesis  to  an- 
other— it  does  so  in  the  present  writer,  at 
least — in  a  rather  illogical  manner.  If  one 
sticks  to  the  detail,  one  may  draw  an  anti- 
spiritist  conclusion;  if  one  thinks  more  of 


107 


Oui  Eternity 

what  the  whole  mass  may  signify,  one  may 
well  incline  to  spiritist  interpretations."^ 

And,  at  the  end  of  his  article,  he  sums  up 
in  the  following  words : 

"I  myself  feel  as  if  an  external  will  to 
communicate  zvere  probably  there,  that  is,  I 
find  myself  doubting,  in  consequence  of  my 
whole  acquaintance  with  that  sphere  of 
phenomena,  that  Mrs.  Piper's  dream-life, 
even  equipped  with  'telepathic'  powers, 
accounts  for  all  the  results  found.  But  if 
asked  whether  the  will  to  communicate  be 
Hodgson's,  or  be  some  mere  spirit-counter- 
feit of  Hodgson's,  I  remain  uncertain  and 
await  more  facts,  facts  which  may  not  point 
clearly  to  a  conclusion  for  fifty  or  a  hundred 
years.  " 

As  we  see,  William  James  is  inclined  to 
waver;  and  at  certain  points  in  his  account 
he  appears  to  waver  still  more  and  indeed 
to  say  deliberately  that  the  spirits  "have  a 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XXIII.,  p.  33. 
^Proceedings,   Vol.  XXIII.,  p.  120. 

108 


Our  Eternity 

finger  in  the  pie."  These  hesitations  on  the 
part  of  a  man  who  has  revolutionized  our 
psychological  ideas  and  who  possessed  a 
brain  as  wonderfully  organized  and  well 
balanced  as  that  of  our  own  Taine,  for 
instance,  are  very  significant.  As  a  doctor 
of  medicine  and  a  professor  of  philosophy, 
sceptical  by  nature  and  scrupulously  faithful 
to  experimental  methods,  he  was  thrice 
qualified  to  conduct  investigations  of  this 
kind  to  a  successful  conclusion.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  allowing  ourselves,  in  our  turn, 
to  be  unduly  influenced  by  those  hesitations; 
but,  in  any  case,  they  show  that  the  problem 
is  a  serious  one,  the  gravest,  perhaps,  if  the 
facts  were  beyond  dispute,  which  we  have 
had  to  solve  since  the  coming  of  Christ ;  and 
that  we  must  not  expect  to  dismiss  it  with  a 
shrug  or  a  laugh. 

6 
I  am  obliged,  for  lack  of  space,  to  refer 
those  who  wish  to  form  an  opinion  of  their 

109 


Our  Eternity 

own  on  the  "Piper-Hodgson"  case  to  the 
text  of  the  Proceedings.    The  case,  at  the 
same  time,  is  far  from  being  one  of  the  most 
striking;  it  should  rather  be  classed,  were 
it   not   for  the   importance   of   the   sitters 
concerned,  among  the  minor  successes  of  the 
Piper  series.     Hodgson,  according  to  the 
invariable  custom  of  the  spirits,  is,  first  of 
all,  bent  on  making  himself  recognized;  and 
the  inevitable  and  tedious  string  of  trifling 
reminiscences    begins    twenty    times    over 
again  and  fills  page  after  page.    As  usual  in 
such  instances,  the  recollections  common  to 
both  the  questioner  and  the  spirit  who  is 
supposed  to  reply  are  brought  out  in  their 
most  circumstantial,  their  most  insignificant 
and   also   their  most  private   details  with 
astonishing  eagerness,  precision  and  viva- 
city.  And  observe  that,  for  all  these  details, 
which  he  discloses  with  such  extraordinary 
facility,   the  dead  man  speaking  goes  by 
preference,    one   would   say,   to   the  most 


no 


Our  Eternity 

hidden  and  forgotten  treasures  of  the  living 
listener's  memor>'.  He  spares  him  nothing; 
he  harps  on  everything  with  childish  satis- 
faction and  apprehensive  solicitude,  not  so 
much  to  persuade  others  as  to  prove  to 
himself  that  he  still  exists.  And  the  ob- 
stinacy of  this  poor,  Invisible  being,  In 
striving  to  manifest  himself  through  the 
hitherto  uncrannied  doors  that  separate  us 
from  our  eternal  destinies,  is  at  once  ridicu- 
lous and  tragic: 

"Do  you  remember,  William,  when  we 
were  in  the  country  at  So-and-so's,  that 
game  we  played  with  the  children;  do  you 
remember  my  saying  such-and-such  a  thing 
when  I  was  in  that  room  where  there  was 
such-and-such  a  chair  or  table  ?" 

"Why,  yes,   Hodgson,   I   do   remember 


now." 


"A  good  test,  that?" 

"First-rate,  Hodgson!" 

And  so  on,  indefinitely.    Sometimes  there 

IZI 


Our  Eternity 

is  a  more  significant  incident  that  seems  to 
surpass  the  mere  transmission  of  subliminal 
thought.  They  are  talking,  for  instance,  of 
a  frustrated  marriage  which  was  always  sur- 
rounded with  great  mystery,  even  to  Hodg- 
son's most  intimate  friends: 

"Do  you  remember  a  lady-doctor  in  New 
York,  a  member  of  our  society?" 

"No,  but  what  about  her?" 

"Her  husband's  name  was  Blair  ...  I 
think." 

"Do  you  mean  Dr.  Blair  Thaw?" 

"Oh,  yes.  Ask  Mrs.  Thaw  if  I  did  not 
at  a  dinner-party  mention  something  about 
the  lady.     I  may  have  done  so." 

James  writes  to  Mrs.  Thaw,  who  de- 
clares that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  fifteen  years 
before,  Hodgson  had  said  to  her  that  he 
had  just  proposed  to  a  girl  and  been  re- 
fused. Mrs.  Thaw  and  Dr.  Newbold  were 
the  only  people  in  the  world  who  knew  the 
particulars. 

112 


Our  Eternity 

But  to  come  to  the  further  sittings. 
Among  other  points  discussed  is  the  finan- 
cial position  of  the  American  branch  of  the 
S.P.R.,  a  position  which,  at  the  death  of  the 
secretary,  or  rather  factotum,  Hodgson, 
was  anything  but  brilliant.  And  behold  the 
somewhat  strange  spectacle  of  different 
members  of  the  society  debating  Its  affairs 
with  their  defunct  secretary.  Shall  they 
dissolve?  Shall  they  amalgamate?  Shall 
they  send  the  materials  collected,  most  of 
which  are  Hodgson's,  to  England?  They 
consult  the  dead  man ;  he  replies,  gives  good 
advice,  seems  fully  aware  of  all  the  compli- 
cations, all  the  difficulties.  One  day,  in 
Hodgson's  lifetime,  when  the  society  was 
found  to  be  short  of  funds,  an  anonymous 
donor  had  sent  the  sum  necessary  to  relieve 
It  from  embarrassment.  Hodgson  alive  did 
not  know  who  the  donor  was;  Hodgson 
dead  picks  him  out  among  those  present, 
addresses  him  by  name  and  thanks  him  pub- 

113 


Our  Eternity 

licly.  On  another  occasion,  Hodgson,  like 
all  the  spirits,  complains  of  the  extreme  diffi- 
culty which  he  finds  in  conveying  his 
thought  through  the  alien  organism  of  the 
medium : 

"I  find  now  difficulties  such  as  a  blind 
man  would  experience  in  trying  to  find  his 
hat,"  he  says. 

But  when,  after  so  much  idle  chatter, 
William  James  at  last  puts  the  essential 
questions  that  burn  our  lips — "Hodgson, 
what  have  you  to  tell  us  about  the  other 
life?" — the  dead  man  becomes  shifty  and 
does  nothing  but  seek  evasions : 

"It  is  not  a  vague  fantasy,  but  a  reality," 
he  replies. 

"But,"  Mrs.  William  James  insists,  "do 
you  live  as  we  do,  as  men  do?" 

"What  does  she  say?"  asks  the  spirit, 
pretending  not  to  understand. 

"Do  you  live  as  men  do?"  repeats 
William  James. 

114 


Our  Eternity 

"Do  you  wear  clothing  and  live  in 
houses?"  adds  his  wife. 

"Oh,  yes,  houses,  but  not  clothing.  No, 
that  is  absurd.  Just  wait  a  moment,  I  am 
going  to  get  out." 

"You  will  come  back  again?" 

"Yes." 

"He  has  got  to  go  out  and  get  his 
breath,"  remarks  another  spirit,  named 
Rector,  suddenly  intervening. 

It  has  not  been  a  waste  of  time,  perhaps, 
to  reproduce  the  general  features  of  one  of 
these  sittings  which  may  be  regarded  as 
typical.  I  will  add,  in  order  to  give  an  idea 
of  the  farthest  point  which  it  is  possible  to 
attain,  the  following  instance  of  an  experi- 
ment made  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  related 
by  him.  He  handed  Mrs.  Piper,  in  her 
"trance,"  a  gold  watch  which  had  just  been 
sent  him  by  one  of  his  uncles  and  which 
belonged  to  that  uncle's  twin  brother,  who 
had  died  twenty  years  before.     When  the 

"5 


Our  Eternity 

watch  was  In  her  possession,  Mrs.  Piper, 
or  rather  Phinuit,  one  of  her  familiar 
spirits,  began  to  relate  a  host  of  details  con- 
cerning the  childhood  of  this  twin  brother, 
facts  dating  back  for  more  than  sixty-six 
years  and  of  course  unknown  to  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge.  Soon  after,  the  surviving  uncle, 
who  lived  in  another  town,  wrote  and  con- 
firmed the  accuracy  of  most  of  these  details, 
which  he  had  quite  forgotten  and  of  which 
he  was  only  now  reminded  by  the  medium's 
revelations;  while  those  which  he  could  not 
recollect  at  all  were  subsequently  declared 
to  be  In  accordance  with  fact  by  a  third 
uncle,  an  old  sea-captain,  who  lived  in  Corn- 
wall and  who  had  not  the  least  notion  why 
such  strange  questions  were  put  to  him. 

I  quote  this  Instance  not  because  It  has 
any  exceptional  or  decisive  value,  but 
simply,  I  repeat,  by  way  of  an  example;  for, 
like  the  case  connected  with  Mrs.  Thaw, 
mentioned  above,  it  marks  pretty  exactly  the 

ii6 


Our  Eternity 

extreme  points  to  which  people  have  up  to 
now,  thanks  to  spirit  agency,  penetrated  the 
mysteries  of  the  unknown.  It  is  well  to 
add  that  cases  in  which  the  supposed  limits 
of  the  most  far-reaching  telepathy  are  so 
manifestly  exceeded  are  fairly  uncommon. 

7 

Now,  what  are  we  to  think  of  all  this? 
Must  we,  with  Myers,  Newbold,  Hyslop, 
Hodgson  and  so  many  others,  who  studied 
this  problem  at  length,  conclude  in  favour 
of  the  incontestable  agency  of  forces  and 
intelligences  returning  from  the  farther 
hank  of  the  great  river  which  it  was  deemed 
that  none  might  cross?  Must  we  acknow- 
ledge with  them  that  there  are  cases  ever 
more  numerous  which  make  it  impossible 
for  us  to  hesitate  any  longer  between  the 
telepathic  hypothesis  and  the  spiritualistic 
hypothesis?  I  do  not  tliink  so.  T  have  no 
prejudices — what  were  the  use  of  having 

117 


Our  Eternity 

any,  in  these  mysteries? — no  reluctance  to 
admit  the  survival  and  the  intervention  of 
the  dead;  but  it  is  wise  and  necessary,  be- 
fore leaving  the  terrestrial  plane,  to  exhaust 
all  the  suppositions,  all  the  explanations 
there  to  be  discovered.  We  have  to  make 
our  choice  between  two  manifestations  of 
the  unknown,  two  miracles,  if  you  prefer, 
whereof  one  is  situated  in  the  world  which 
we  inhabit  and  the  other  in  a  region  which, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  we  believe  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  us  by  nameless  spaces  which  no 
human  being,  alive  or  dead,  has  crossed  to 
this  day.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  we 
should  stay  in  our  own  world,  as  long  as  it 
gives  us  a  foothold,  as  long  as  we  are  not 
pitilessly  expelled  from  it  by  a  series  of 
irresistible  and  irrefutable  facts  issuing 
from  the  adjoining  abyss.  The  survival  of 
a  spirit  is  no  more  improbable  than  the  pro- 
digious faculties  which  we  are  obliged  to 
attribute  to  the  mediums  if  we  deny  them 

n8 


Our  Eternity 

to  the  dead;  but  the  existence  of  the 
medium,  contrary  to  that  of  the  spirit,  is 
unquestionable;  and  therefore  it  is  for  the 
spirit,  or  for  those  who  make  use  of  its 
name,  first  to  prove  that  it  exists. 

Do  the  extraordinary  phenomena  of 
which  we  have  spoken — transmission  of 
thought  from  one  subconscious  mind  to 
another,  perception  of  events  at  a  distance, 
subHminal  clairvoyance — occur  when  the 
dead  are  not  in  evidence,  when  the  experi- 
ments are  being  made  exclusively  be- 
tween   living    persons?      This    cannot    be 

honestly  contested.  Certainly  no  one  has 
ever  obtained  among  living  people  series 
of  communications  or  revelations  similar 
to  those  of  the  great  spiritualistic  me- 
diums, Mrs.  Piper,  Mrs.  Thompson  and 
Stainton  Moses,  nor  anything  that  can 
be  compared  with  these  so  far  as  con- 
tinuity or  lucidity  is  concerned.  But, 
though  the  quality  of  the  phenomena  will 

119 


Our  Eternity 

not  bear  comparison,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  their  inner  nature  Is  Identical.  It 
is  logical  to  infer  from  this  that  the  real 
cause  lies  not  in  the  source  of  inspiration, 
but  in  the  personal  value,  the  sensitiveness, 
the  power  of  the  medium.  For  the  rest, 
Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington,  who  devoted  an  ex- 
ceedingly detailed  study  to  Mrs.  Thompson, 
plainly  perceived  In  her,  when  she  was  not 
"entranced"  and  when  there  were  no  spirits 
whatever  in  question,  manifestations  In- 
ferior, it  Is  true,  but  absolutely  analogous 
to  those  involving  the  dead.^  These 
mediums  are  pleased,  in  all  good  faith  and 
probably  unconsciously,  to  give  to  their  sub- 
liminal faculties,  to  their  secondary  person- 
alities, or  to  accept,  on  their  behalf,  names 
which   were    borne    by    beings    who    have 

^  For  a  discussion  of  these  cases,  which  would  take 
us  too  far  from  our  subject,  see  Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington's 
paper,  Phenomena,  in  Mrs.  Thompson's  Trance  {Pro- 
ceedings, Vol.  XVIII.,  pp.  1 80  et  seq.)  ;  also  Professor 
A.  C.  Pigou's  article  in  Vol.  XXIII.  (pp.  286  et  seq.), 
which  treats  of  "Cross  Correspondence"  without  the 
agency  of  spirits. 

120 


Our  Eternity 

crossed  to  the  farther  side  of  the  mystery: 
this  is  a  matter  of  vocabulary  or  nomen- 
clature which  neither  lessens  nor  increases 
the  intrinsic  significance  of  the  facts.  Well, 
in  examining  these  facts,  however  strange 
and  really  unparalleled  some  of  them  may 
be,  I  never  find  one  which  proceeds  frankly 
from  this  world  or  which  comes  indispu- 
tably from  the  other.  They  are,  if  you  wish, 
phenomenal  border  incidents;  but  it  cannot 
be  said  that  the  border  has  been  violated. 
In  the  story  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  watch, 
for  instance,  which  is  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic and  one  which  carries  us  farther 
than  most,  we  must  attribute  to  the  medium 
faculties  that  have  ceased  to  be  human.  She 
must  have  put  herself  in  touch,  whether  by 
perception  of  events  at  a  distance,  or  by 
transmission  of  thought  from  one  subcon- 
scious mind  to  another,  or  again  by  sub- 
liminal clairvoyance,  with  the  two  surviving 
brothers    of    the    deceased    owner    of    the 

121 


Our  Eternity 

watch;  and,  in  the  past  subconsciousness  of 
those  two  brothers,  distant  from  each  other, 
she  had  to  rediscover  a  host  of  circum- 
stances which  they  themselves  had  forgotten 
and  which  lay  hidden  beneath  the  heaped-up 
dust  and  darkness  of  six-and-sixty  years.  It 
is  certain  that  a  phenomenon  of  this  kind 
passes  the  bounds  of  the  imagination  and 
that  we  should  refuse  to  credit  it  if,  first  of 
all,  the  experiment  had  not  been  controlled 
and  certified  by  a  man  of  the  standing  of 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  if,  moreover,  it  did 
not  form  one  of  a  group  of  equally  signifi- 
cant facts  which  clearly  show  that  we  are 
not  here  concerned  with  an  absolutely 
unique  miracle  or  with  an  unhoped-for  and 
unprecedented  concourse  of  coincidences. 
It  is  simply  a  matter  of  distant  perception, 
subliminal  clairvoyance  and  telepathy  raised 
to  the  highest  power;  and  these  three  mani- 
festations of  the  unexplored  depths  of  man 
are    to-day    recognized    and    classified    by 

122 


Our  Eternity 

science,  which  is  not  saying  that  they  are 
explained :  that  is  another  question.    When, 
in  connexion  with  electricity,  we  use  such 
terms  as  positive,  negative,  induction,  poten- 
tial and  resistance,  we  are  also  applying 
conventional  words  to  facts  and  phenomena 
of  whose   inward   essence   we   are   utterly 
ignorant;  and  we  must  needs  be  content 
with   these,   pending  better.     There   is,   I 
insist,   between  these   extraordinary  mani- 
festations   and    those    given    to    us    by    a 
medium  who  is  not  speaking  in  the  name 
of  the  dead,  but  a  difference  between  the 
greater  and  the  lesser,  a  difference  of  ex- 
tent or  degree  and  in  no  wise  a  difference  in 
kind. 


For  the  proof  to  be  more  decisive,  it 
would  be  necessary  that  no  one,  neither  the 
medium  nor  the  witnesses,  should  ever  have 
known  of  the  existence  of  him  whose  past  is 

123 


Our  Eternity 

revealed  by  the  dead  man ;  in  other  words, 
that  every  Hving  link  should  be  eliminated. 
I    do   not    believe   that    this   has   actually 
occurred  up  to  the  present,  nor  even  that  it 
is  possible;  in  any  case,  it  would  be  very 
difficult  to  control  such  an  experiment.    Be 
this  as  it  may.  Dr.  Hodgson,  who  devoted 
part  of  his  life  to  the  quest  of  specific  phe- 
nomena wherein  the  boundaries  of  medium- 
istic  power  should  be  plainly  overstepped, 
believes  that  he  found  them  in  certain  cases, 
of  which — as  the  others  were  of  very  much 
the  same  nature — I  will  merely  mention  one 
of  the  most  striking.^    In  a  course  of  excel- 
lent sittings,  with  Mrs.  Piper  the  medium, 
he  communicated  with  various  dead  friends, 
who  reminded  him  of  a  large  number  of 
common    memories.       The    medium,    the 
spirits  and  he  himself  seemed  in  a  wonder- 
fully accommodating  mood;  and  the  reve- 
lations were  plentiful,  exact  and  easy.     In 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XIII.,  pp.  349-350  and  375 

124 


Our  Eternity 

this  extremely  favourable  atmosphere,  he 
was  placed  in  communication  with  the  soul 
of  one  of  his  best  friends,  who  had  died  a 
year  before  and  whom  he  simply  calls  "A." 
This  A,  whom  he  had  known  more  inti- 
mately than  most  of  the  spirits  with  whom 
he  had  communicated  previously,  behaved 
quite  differently  and,  while  establishing  his 
identity  beyond  dispute,  vouchsafed  only 
incoherent  replies.  Now  A  "had  been 
troubled  much,  for  years  before  his  death, 
by  headaches  and  occasionally  mental  ex- 
haustion, though  not  amounting  to  positive 
mental  disturbance." 

The  same  phenomena  appears  to  recur 
whenever  similar  troubles  have  come  before 
death,  as  in  cases  of  suicide. 

"If  the  telepathic  explanation  is  held  to 
be  the  only  one,"  says  Dr.  Hodgson  (I  give 
the  gist  of  his  observations),  "if  it  is 
claimed  that  all  the  communications  of  these 
discarnate  minds  are  only  suggestions  from 

125 


Our  Eternity 

my  subconscious  self,  it  is  unintelligible  that, 
after  having  obtained  satisfactory  results 
from  others  whom  I  had  known  far  less 
intimately  than  A,  and  with  whom  I  had 
consequently  far  fewer  recollections  in  com- 
mon, I  should  get  from  him,  in  the  same 
sittings,  nothing  but  incoherencies.  I  am 
thus  driven  to  believe  that  my  subliminal 
self  is  not  the  only  thing  in  evidence,  that  it 
is  in  the  presence  of  a  real,  living  person- 
ality, whose  mental  state  is  the  same  as  it 
was  at  the  hour  of  death,  a  personality 
which  remains  independent  of  my  sublim- 
inal consciousness  and  absolutely  unaffected 
by  it,  which  is  deaf  to  its  suggestions  and 
draws  from  its  own  resources  the  revelations 
which  it  makes." 

The  argument  is  not  without  value,  but 
its  full  force  would  be  obtained  only  if  it 
were  certain  that  none  of  those  present  knew 
of  A's  madness;  otherwise  it  can  be  con- 
tended that,  the  notion  of  madness  having 

126 


Our  Eternity 

penetrated  the  subconscious  Intelligence  of 
one  of  them,  it  worked  upon  it  and  gave  to 
the  replies  induced  a  form  in  keeping  with 
the  state  of  mind  presupposed  In  the  dead 
man. 


Of  a  truth,  by  extending  the  possibilities 
of  the  medium  to  these  extremes,  we  furnish 
ourselv^es  with  explanations  which  forestall 
nearly  everything,  bar  every  road  and  all 
but  deny  to  the  spirits  any  power  of  mani- 
festing themselves  in  the  manner  which  they 
appear  to  have  chosen.  But  why  do  they 
choose  that  manner?  Why  do  they  thus 
restrict  themselves  ?  Why  do  they  jealously 
hug  the  narrow  strip  of  territory  which 
memory  occupies  on  the  confines  of  both 
worlds  and  from  which  none  but  indecisive 
or  questionable  evidence  can  reach  us? 
Are  there  then  no  other  outlets,  no  other 
horizons?    Why  do  they  tarry  around  us. 

127 


Our  Eternity 

stagnant  in  their  little  pasts,  when,  in  their 
freedom  from  the  flesh,  they  ought  to  be 
able  to  wander  at  ease  over  the  virgin 
stretches  of  space  and  time?  Do  they  not 
yet  know  that  the  sign  which  will  prove  to 
us  that  they  survive  is  to  be  found  not  with 
us,  but  with  them,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
grave?  Why  do  they  come  back  with 
empty  hands  and  empty  words?  Is  that 
what  one  finds  when  one  is  steeped  in  in- 
finity? Beyond  our  last  hour  is  it  all  bare 
and  shapeless  and  dim?  If  it  be  so,  let 
them  tell  us;  and  the  evidence  of  the  dark- 
ness will  at  least  possess  a  grandeur  that 
IS  all  too  absent  from  these  cross-examining 
methods.  Of  what  use  is  it  to  die,  if  all 
life's  trivialities  continue?  Is  it  really  worth 
while  to  have  passed  through  the  terrifying 
gorges  which  open  on  the  eternal  fields,  in 
order  to  remember  that  we  had  a  great- 
uncle  called  Peter  and  that  our  Cousin  Paul 
was  afflicted  with  varicose  veins  and  a  gas- 

I2g 


Our  Eternity 

trie  complaint?  At  that  rate,  I  should 
choose  for  those  whom  I  love  the  august 
and  frozen  solitudes  of  the  everlasting 
nothing.  Though  it  be  difficult  for  them, 
as  they  complain,  to  make  themselves  under- 
stood through  a  strange  and  sleep-bound 
organism,  they  tell  us  enough  categorical 
details  about  the  past  to  show  that  they 
could  disclose  similar  details,  if  not  about 
the  future,  which  they  perhaps  do  not  yet 
know,  at  least  about  the  lesser  mysteries 
which  surround  us  on  ever}'  side  and  which 
our  body  alone  prevents  us  from  approach- 
ing. There  are  a  thousand  things,  large  or 
small,  alike  unknown  to  us,  which  we  must 
perceive  when  feeble  eyes  no  longer  arrest 
our  vision.  It  is  in  those  regions  from 
which  a  shadow  separates  us  and  not  in 
foolish  tittle-tattle  of  the  past  that  they 
would  at  last  find  the  clear  and  genuine 
proof  which  they  seem  to  seek  with  such 
enthusiasm.     Without  demanding  a  great 

I2p 


Our  Eternity 

miracle,  one  would  nevertheless  think  that 
we  had  the  right  to  expect  from  a  mind 
which  nothing  now  enthrals  some  other  dis- 
course than  that  which  it  avoided  when  it 
was  still  subject  to  matter. 


130 


CHAPTER    VII 


CROSS      CORRESPONDENCE 


CHAPTER  VII 

CROSS    CORRESPONDENCE 

I 

THIS  is  where  things  stood  when,  of 
late  years,  the  mediums,  the  spiritual- 
ists, or  rather,  it  appears,  the  spirits  them- 
selves— 'for  one  cannot  tell  exactly  with 
whom  we  have  to  do — perhaps  dissatisfied 
at  not  being  more  definitely  recognized  and 
understood,  invented,  for  a  more  effectual 
proof  of  their  existence,  what  has  been 
called  "cross  correspondence."  Here  the 
position  is  reversed :  it  is  no  longer  a  ques- 
tion of  various  and  more  or  less  numer- 
ous spirits  revealing  themselves  through  the 
agency  of  one  and  the  same  medium,  but  of 
a  single  spirit  manifesting  itself  almost 
simultaneously  through  several  mediums 
often  at  great  distances  from  one  another 

133 


Our  Eternity 

and  without  any  preliminary  understanding 
among  themselves.  Each  of  these  messages, 
taken  alone,  is  usually  unintelligible  and 
yields  a  meaning  only  when  laboriously 
combined  with  all  the  others. 

As  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says: 

"The  object  of  this  ingenious  and  com- 
plicated effort  clearly  is  to  prove  that  there 
is  some  definite  intelligence  underlying  the 
phenomena,  distinct  from  that  of  any  of 
the  automatists,  by  sending  fragments  of  a 
message  or  literary  reference  which  shall  be 
unintelligible  to  each  separately — so  that  no 
effective  mutual  telepathy  is  possible  be- 
tween them — thus  eliminating  or  trying  to 
eliminate  what  had  long  been  recognized  by 
all  members  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research  as  the  most  troublesome  and  in- 
destructible of  the  semi-normal  hypotheses. 
And  the  further  object  is  evidently  to  prove 
as  far  as  possible,  by  the  substance  and 
quality  of  the  message,  that  it  is  character- 

£34 


Our  Eternity 

Istic  of  the  one  particular  personality  who 
is  ostensibly  communicating,  and  of  no 
other."^ 

The  experiments  are  still  in  their  early 
stages ;  and  the  most  recent  volumes  of  the 
Proceedings  are  devoted  to  them.  Although 
the  accumulated  mass  of  evidence  is  already 
considerable,  there  is  no  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  from  it  as  yet ;  and,  in  any  case,  what- 
ever the  spiritualists  may  say,  the  suspicion 
of  telepathy  seems  to  me  to  be  in  no  way 
removed.  The  experiments  form  a  rather 
fantastic  literary  exercise,  one  much  supe- 
rior, intellectually,  to  the  ordinary  mani- 
festations of  the  mediums;  but,  up  to  the 
present,  there  is  no  reason  for  placing  their 
mystery  in  the  other  world  rather  than  in 
this.  Men  have  tried  to  see  in  them  a  proof 
that  somewhere,  in  time  or  space,  or  else 
beyond  both,  there  is  a  sort  of  immense 
cosmic  reserve  of  knowledge  upon  which  the 

*  The  Survival  of  Man.  Chap.  XXV.,  p.  325. 

135 


Our  Eternity- 
spirits  go  and  draw  freely.     But,  if  the  re- 
serve exists,  which  is  very  possible,  nothing 
tells  us  that  it  is  not  the  living  rather  than 
the  dead  who  repair  to  it.    It  is  very  strange 
that  the  dead,  if  they  really  have  access  to 
the    immeasurable   treasure,    should   bring 
back  nothing  from  it  but  a  kind  of  ingenious 
child's  puzzle,  although  it  ought  to  contain 
myriads  of  lost  or  forgotten  notions  and 
acquirements,  heaped  up  during  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years  in  abysses  which  our 
mind,  weighed  down  by  the  body,  can  no 
longer  penetrate,  but  which  nothing  seems 
to  close  against  the  investigations  of  freer 
and  more  subtle  activities.     They  are  evi- 
dently   surrounded    by    Innumerable    mys- 
teries, by  unsuspected  and  formidable  truths 
that  loom  large  on  every  side.    The  smallest 
astronomical   or  biological   revelation,   the 
least  secret  of  olden  time,  such  as  that  of  the 
temper  of  copper,  possessed  by  the  ancients, 
an  archseologlcal  detail,  a  poem,  a  statue,  a 

136 


Our  Eternity 

recovered  remedy,  a  shred  of  one  of  those 
unknown  sciences  which  flourished  in  Egypt 
or  Atlantis:  any  of  these  would  form  a 
much  more  decisive  argument  than  hun- 
dreds of  more  or  less  literary  reminiscences. 
Why  do  they  speak  to  us  so  seldom  of  the 
future?  And  for  what  reason,  when  they 
do  venture  upon  it,  are  they  mistaken  with 
such  disheartening  regularity?  One  would 
think,  rather,  that,  in  the  sight  of  a  being 
delivered  from  the  trammels  of  the  body 
and  of  time,  the  years,  whether  past  or 
future,  ought  all  to  lie  outspread  on  one 
and  the  same  plane/     We  may,  therefore, 

'  In  this  connexion,  however,  we  find  two  or  three 
rather  perturbing  facts,  a  remarkable  one  being,  at  a 
spiritualistic  meeting  held  bv  the  late  W.  T.  Stead,  the 
prediction  of  the  murder  of  King  Alexander  and  Queen 
Draga,  described  with  the  most  circumstantial  details. 
A  verbatim  report  of  this  prediction  was  drawn  up  and 
signed  by  some  thirty  witnesses;  and  Stead  went  next 
day  to  beg  the  Servian  minister  in  London  to  warn  the 
king  of  the  danger  that  threatened  him.  The  event 
took  place,  as  announced,  a  few  months  later.  But 
"precognition"  does  not  necessarily  require  the  inter- 
vention of  the  dead  ;  moreover,  every  case  of  this  kind, 
before  being  definitely  accepted,  would  call  for  pro- 
longed investigation  in  every  particular. 

1.37 


Our  Eternity 

say  that  the  ingenuity  of  the  proof  turns 
against  it.  All  things  considered,  as  In  the 
other  attempts  and  notably  those  of  the 
famous  medium  Stalnton  Moses,  there  Is 
the  same  characteristic  Inability  to  bring  us 
the  veriest  particle  of  truth  or  knowledge 
of  which  no  vestige  could  be  found  in  a 
living  brain  or  In  a  book  written  on  this 
earth.  And  yet  it  Is  Inconceivable  that  there 
should  not  somewhere  exist  a  knowledge 
that  Is  not  as  ours  and  truths  other  than 
those  which  we  possess  here  below.  The 
case  of  Stalnton  Moses,  whose  name  we 
have  just  mentioned,  Is  a  very  striking  one 
In  this  respect.  This  Stalnton  Moses  was  a 
dogmatic,  hard-working  clergyman,  whose 
learning,  Myers  tells  us,  in  the  normal  state, 
did  not  exceed  that  of  an  ordinary  school- 
master. But  he  was  no  sooner  "entranced" 
before  certain  spirits  of  antiquity  or  of  the 
middle  ages,  who  are  hardly  known  save 
to   profound  scholars,    among   others   St. 

138 


Our  Eternity 

Hippolytus,  Bishop  of  Ostia,  Plotinus, 
Athenodorus,  the  tutor  of  Augustus,  and, 
more  particularly,  Grocyn,  the  friend  of 
Erasmus,  took  possession  of  his  person  and 
manifested  themselves  through  his  agency. 
Now,  Grocyn,  for  instance,  furnished  cert- 
ain information  about  Erasmus  which  was 
at  first  thought  to  have  been  gathered  in 
the  other  world,  but  which  was  subsequently 
discovered  in  forgotten  but  nevertheless  ac- 
cessible books.  On  the  other  hand,  Stainton 
Moses'  Integrity  was  never  questioned  for 
an  instant  by  those  who  knew  him ;  and  we 
may  therefore  take  his  word  for  it  when 
he  declares  that  he  had  not  read  the  books 
in  question.  Here  again,  the  mystery,  in- 
explicable though  it  be,  seems  really  to 
lie  hidden  in  the  midst  of  ourselves.  It  is 
unconscious  reminiscence,  if  you  will,  sug- 
gestion at  a  distance,  subliminal  reading, 
but,  no  more  than  in  cross  correspondence, 
is  it  indispensable  to  have  recourse  to  the 

139 


Our  Eternity 

dead  and  to  drag  them  by  main  force  into 
the  riddle,  which,  seen  from  our  side  of  the 
grave,  is  dark  and  impassioned  enough  as 
it  is.  Furthermore,  we  must  not  insist  un- 
duly on  this  cross  correspondence.  We  must 
remember  that  the  whole  matter  is  in  its 
infancy  and  that  the  dead  appear  to  have 
no  small  difficulty  in  grasping  the  require- 
ments of  the  living. 


In  regard  to  this  subject,  as  to  the  others, 
the  spiritualists  are  fond  of  saying; 

"If  you  refuse  to  admit  the  agency  of 
spirits,  the  majority  of  these  phenomena  are 
absolutely  inexplicable." 

Agreed;  nor  do  we  pretend  to  explain 
them,  for  hardly  anything  is  to  be  explained 
upon  this  earth.  We  are  content  simply  to 
ascribe  them  to  the  incomprehensible  power 
of  the  mediums,  which  is  no  more  improb- 
able than  the  survival  of  the  dead  and  has 

140 


Our  Eternity 

the  advantage  of  not  going  outside  the 
sphere  which  we  occupy  and  of  bearing 
relation  to  a  large  number  of  similar  facts 
that  occur  among  living  people.  Those 
singular  faculties  are  baffling  only  because 
they  are  still  sporadic  and  because  but  a 
very  short  time  has  elapsed  since  they  re- 
ceived scientific  recognition.  Properly 
speaking,  they  are  no  more  marvellous  than 
those  which  we  use  daily  without  marvelling 
at  them:  our  memory,  for  instance,  our 
understanding,  our  imagination  and  so 
forth.  They  form  part  of  the  great  miracle 
that  we  are;  and,  having  once  admitted  the 
miracle,  we  should  be  surprised  not  so  much 
at  its  extent  as  at  its  limits. 

Nevertheless,  to  close  this  chapter,  I  am 
not  at  all  of  opinion  that  we  must  definitely 
reject  the  spiritualistic  theory:  that  would 
be  both  unjust  and  premature.  Hitherto, 
everything  remains  in  suspense.  We  may 
say  that  things  are  still  very  little  removed 

141 


Our  Eternity 

from  the  point  marked  by  Sir  William 
Crookes,  in  1874,  in  an  article  which  he 
contributed  to  the  Quarterly  Journal  of 
Science : 

"The  difference  between  the  advocates  of 
Psychic  Force  and  the  Spiritualists  consists 
in  this — that  we  contend  that  there  is  as  yet 
insufficient  proof  of  any  other  directing 
agent  than  the  Intelligence  of  the  Medium, 
and  no  proof  whatever  of  the  agency  of 
Spirits  of  the  Dead;  while  the  Spiritualists 
hold  it  as  a  faith,  not  demanding  further 
proof,  that  Spirits  of  the  Dead  are  the  sole 
agents  in  the  production  of  all  the  phe- 
nomena. Thus  the  controversy  resolves 
itself  into  a  pure  question  of  fact,  only  to  be 
determined  by  a  laborious  and  long-con- 
tinued series  of  experiments  and  an  ex- 
tensive collection  of  psychological  facts, 
which  should  be  the  first  duty  of  the  Psycho- 
logical Society,  the  formation  of  which  is 

now  in  progress." 

142 


Our  Eternity 

Meanwhile,  it  is  saying  a  good  deal  that 
rigorous  scientific  investigations  have  not 
utterly  shattered  a  theory  which  so  radically 
confounds  the  idea  which  we  were  wont  to 
form  of  death.  We  shall  see  presently  why, 
in  considering  our  destinies  beyond  the 
grave,  we  need  have  no  reason  to  linger  too 
long  over  these  apparitions  or  these  reve- 
lations, even  though  they  should  really  be 
incontestable  and  to  the  point.  They  would 
seem,  all  told,  to  be  but  the  incoherent  and 
precarious  manifestations  of  a  transitory 
state.  They  would  at  best  prove,  if  we  were 
bound  to  admit  them,  that  a  reflexion  of 
ourselves,  an  after-vibration  of  the  nerves, 
a  bundle  of  emotions,  a  spiritual  silhouette, 
a  grotesque  and  forlorn  image,  or,  more 
correctly,  a  sort  of  truncated  and  uprooted 
memory  can,  after  our  death,  linger  and 
float  in  a  space  where  nothing  remains  to 
feed  it,  where  it  gradually  becomes  wan  and 
lifeless,  but  where  a  special  fluid,  emanating 

143 


Our  Eternity 

from  an  exceptional  medium,  succeeds,  at 
moments,  in  galvanizing  it.  Perhaps  it 
exists  objectively,  perhaps  it  subsists  and 
revives  only  in  the  recollection  of  certain 
sympathies.  It  would,  after  all,  be  not 
unlikely  that  the  memory  which  represents 
us  during  our  life  should  continue  to  do  so 
for  a  few  weeks  or  even  a  few  years  after 
our  decease.  This  would  explain  the  evasive 
and  deceptive  character  of  those  spirits 
which,  possessing  but  a  mnemonic  exist- 
ence, are  naturally  able  to  interest  them- 
selves only  in  matters  within  their  reach. 
Hence  their  irritating  and  maniacal  energy 
in  clinging  to  the  slightest  facts,  their  sleepy 
dulness,  their  incomprehensible  indifference 
and  ignorance  and  all  the  wretched  absurdi- 
ties which  we  have  noticed  more  than  once. 
But,  I  repeat,  it  is  much  simpler  to 
attribute  these  absurdities  to  the  special 
character  and  the  as  yet  imperfectly  recog- 
nized difficulties  of  telepathic  communica- 

144 


Our  Eternity 

tion.  The  unconscious  suggestions  of  the 
most  intelligent  among  those  who  take  part 
in  the  experiment  are  impaired,  disjointed 
and  stripped  of  their  main  virtues  in  passing 
through  the  obscure  intermediary  of  the 
medium.  It  may  be  that  they  stray,  make 
their  way  into  certain  forgotten  corners 
which  the  intelligence  no  longer  visits  and 
thence  bring  back  more  or  less  surprising 
discoveries;  but  the  intellectual  quality  of 
the  aggregate  will  always  be  inferior  to  that 
which  a  conscious  mind  would  yield.  Be- 
sides, once  more,  it  is  not  yet  time  to  draw 
conclusions.  We  must  not  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  we  have  to  do  with  a  science  which 
was  born  but  yesterday  and  which  is  grop- 
ing for  its  implements,  its  paths,  its  methods 
and  its  aim  in  a  darkness  denser  than  the 
earth's.  The  boldest  bridge  that  men  have 
yet  undertaken  to  throw  across  the  river  of 
death  is  not  to  be  built  in  thirty  years.  Most 
sciences  have  centuries  of  thankless  efforts 

145 


Our  Eternity 

and  barren  uncertainties  behind  them;  and 
there  are,  I  imagine,  few  among  the 
younger  of  them  that  can  show  from  the 
earliest  hour,  as  this  one  does,  promises  of 
a  harvest  which  may  not  be  the  harvest  of 
their  conscious  sowing,  but  which  already 
bids  fair  to  yield  much  unknown  and  won- 
drous fruit. ^ 

'To  exhaust  this  question  of  survival  and  of  com- 
munications with  the  dead,  I  ought  to  speak  of  Dr. 
Hyslop's  recent  investigations,  made  with  the  assistance 
of  the  mediums  Smead  and  Chenoweth  (communica- 
tions with  William  James).  I  ought  also  to  mention 
Julia's  famous  "bureau,"  and,  above  all,  the  extraordi- 
nary sittings  of  Mrs.  Wriedt,  the  trumpet  medium,  who 
not  only  obtains  communications  in  which  the  dead 
speak  languages  of  which  she  herself  is  completely 
ignorant,  but  raises  apparitions  said  to  be  extremely 
disturbing.  I  ought,  lastly,  to  examine  the  facts  set 
forth  by  Professor  Porro,  Dr.  Venzano  and  M.  Rozanne 
and  many  other  things  besides,  for  spiritualistic  in- 
vestigation and  literature  are  already  piling  volume 
upon  volume.  But  it  was  not  my  intention  nor  my 
pretension  to  make  a  complete  study  of  scientific  spi- 
ritualism. I  wished  merely  to  omit  no  essential  point 
and  to  give  a  general  but  accurate  idea  of  this  posthu- 
mous atmosphere  which  no  really  new  and  decisive 
fact  has  come  to  unsettle  since  the  manifestations  of 
which  we  have  spoken. 


146 


CHAPTER    VIII 


REINCARNATION 


CHAPTER  VIII 

REINCARNATION 


SO  much  for  survival  proper.  But 
certain  spiritualists  go  farther  and 
attempt  the  scientific  proof  of  palingenesis 
and  the  transmigration  of  souls.  I  pass  over 
their  merely  moral  or  scientific  arguments, 
as  well  as  those  which  they  discover  in  the 
prenatal  reminiscences  of  illustrious  men 
and  others.  These  reminiscences,  though 
often  disturbing,  are  still  too  rare,  too  spo- 
radic, so  to  speak;  and  the  supervision  has 
not  always  been  sufficiently  close  for  us  to 
be  able  to  rely  upon  them  with  safety.  Nor 
do  I  propose  to  pay  attention  to  the  proofs 
based  upon  the  inborn  aptitudes  of  genius 
or  of  certain  infant  prodigies,  aptitudes 
which  are  difficult  to  explain,  but  which  may 

149 


Our  Eternity 

nevertheless  be  attributed  to  unknown  laws 
of  heredity.  I  shall  be  content  to  recall 
briefly  the  results  of  some  of  Colonel  de 
Rochas'  experiments,  which  leave  one  at  a 
loss  for  an  explanation. 

First  of  all,  it  is  only  right  to  say  that 
Colonel  de  Rochas  is  a  savant  who  seeks 
nothing  but  objective  truth  and  does  so  with 
a  scientific  strictness  and  integrity  that  have 
never  been  questioned.  He  puts  certain 
exceptional  subjects  into  an  hypnotic  sleep 
and,  by  means  of  downward  passes,  makes 
them  trace  back  the  whole  course  of  their 
existence.  He  thus  takes  them  successively 
to  their  youth,  their  adolescence  and  down 
to  the  extreme  limits  of  their  childhood.  At 
each  of  these  hypnotic  stages,  the  subject 
reassumes  the  consciousness,  the  character 
and  the  state  of  mind  which  he  possessed 
at  the  corresponding  stage  in  his  life.  He 
goes  over  the  same  events,  with  their  joys 
and  sorrows.     If  he  has  been  ill,  he  once 

150 


Our  Eternity 

more  passes  through  his  illness,  his  convales- 
cence and  his  recovery.  If,  for  instance,  the 
subject  is  a  woman  who  has  been  a  mother, 
she  again  becomes  pregnant  and  again 
suffers  the  pains  of  child-birth.  Carried  back 
to  an  age  when  she  was  learning  to  write, 
she  writes  like  a  child  and  her  writing  can 
be  placed  side  by  side  with  the  copy-books 
which  she  filled  at  school. 

This  in  itself  is  very  extraordinary;  but, 
as  Colonel  de  Rochas  says : 

"Up  to  the  present  we  have  walked  on 
firm  ground;  we  have  been  observing  a 
physiological  phenomenon  which  is  diflUcult 
of  explanation,  but  which  numerous  experi- 
ments and  verifications  allow  us  to  look 
upon  as  certain." 

We  now  enter  a  region  where  still  more 
surprising  enigmas  await  us.  Let  us,  to 
come  to  details,  take  one  of  the  simplest 
cases.  The  subject  is  a  girl  of  eighteen, 
called  Josephine.     She  lives  at  Voiron,  In 

151 


Our  Eternity 

the  department  of  the  Isere.  By  means  of 
downward  passes  she  is  brought  back  to  the 
condition  of  a  baby  at  its  mother's  breast. 
The  passes  continue  and  the  wonder-tale 
runs  its  course.  Josephine  can  no  longer 
speak;  and  we  have  the  great  silence  of 
infancy,  which  seems  to  be  followed  by  a 
silence  more  mysterious  still.  Josephine  no 
longer  answers  except  by  signs;  she  is  not 
yet  born,  "she  is  floating  in  darkness." 
They  persist;  the  sleep  becomes  heavier; 
and  suddenly,  from  the  depths  of  that  sleep, 
rises  the  voice  of  another  being,  a  voice 
unexpected  and  unknown,  the  voice  of  a 
churlish,  distrustful  and  discontented  old 
man.  They  question  him.  At  first  he 
refuses  to  answer,  saying  that  "of  course 
he's  there,  as  he's  speaking;"  that  "he  sees 
nothing;"  and  that  "he's  in  the  dark." 
They  increase  the  number  of  passes  and 
gradually  gain  his  confidence.  His  name  is 
Jean  Claude  Bourdon;  he  is  an  old  man;  he 

152 


Our  Eternity 

has  long  been  ailing  and  bed-ridden.  He 
tells  the  story  of  his  life.  He  was  born  at 
Champvent,  in  the  parish  of  Polliat,  in 
1812.  He  went  to  school  until  he  was 
eighteen  and  served  his  time  in  the  army 
with  the  Seventh  Artillery  at  Besancon;  and 
he  describes  his  gay  times  there,  while  the 
sleeping  girl  makes  the  gesture  of  twirling 
an  imaginary  moustache.  When  he  goes 
back  to  his  native  place,  he  does  not  marry, 
but  he  has  a  mistress.  He  leads  a  solitary 
life  (I  omit  all  but  the  essential  facts)  and 
dies  at  the  age  of  seventy,  after  a  long 
illness. 

We  now  hear  the  dead  man  speak;  and 
his  posthumous  revelations  are  not  sensa- 
tional, which,  however,  is  not  an  adequate 
reason  for  doubting  their  genuineness.  He 
"feels  himself  growing  out  of  his  body;" 
but  he  remains  attached  to  it  for  a  fairly 
long  time.  His  fluidic  body,  which  is  at  Hrst 
diffused,  takes  a  more  concentrated  form. 

IS3 


Our  Eternity- 
He  lives  in  darkness,  which  he  finds  dis- 
agreeable; but  he  does  not  suffer.  At  last, 
the  night  in  which  he  is  plunged  is  streaked 
with  a  few  flashes  of  light.  The  idea  comes 
to  him  to  reincarnate  himself  and  he  draws 
near  to  her  who  is  to  be  his  mother  (that  is 
to  say,  the  mother  of  Josephine).  He 
encircles  her  until  the  child  is  born,  where- 
upon he  gradually  enters  the  child's  body. 
Until  about  the  seventh  year,  this  body  was 
surrounded  by  a  sort  of  floating  mist,  in 
which  he  used  to  see  many  thmgs  which  he 
has  not  seen  since. 

The  next  thing  to  be  done  Is  to  go  back 
beyond  Jean  Claude.  A  mesmerizatlon 
lasting  nearly  three-quarters  of  an  hour, 
without  lingering  at  any  Intermediate  stage, 
brings  the  old  man  back  to  babyhood.  A 
fresh  silence,  a  new  limbo;  and  then,  sud- 
denly, another  voice  and  an  unexpected 
individual.  This  time  It  Is  an  old  woman 
who  has  been  very  wicked;  and  so  she  Is 

154 


Our  Eternity 

in  great  torment  (she  Is  dead,  at  the  actual 
instant;  for,  in  this  inverted  world,  lives 
go  backwards  and  of  course  begin  at  the 
end).  She  is  in  deep  darkness,  surrounded 
by  evil  spirits.  She  speaks  in  a  faint  voice, 
but  always  gives  definite  replies  to  the  quest- 
ions put  to  her,  instead  of  cavilling  at  every 
moment,  as  Jean  Claude  did.  Her  name  Is 
Philomene  Carteron. 

"By  intensifying  the  sleep,"  adds 
Colonel  de  Rochas,  whom  I  will  now  quote, 
"I  induce  the  manifestations  of  a  living 
Philomene.  She  no  longer  suffers,  seems 
very  calm  and  always  answers  very  coldly 
and  distinctly.  She  knows  that  she  is  un- 
popular in  the  neighbourhood,  but  no  one  is 
a  penny  the  worse  and  she  will  be  even  with 
them  yet.  She  was  born  in  1702;  her 
maiden  name  was  Philomene  Charpigny; 
her  grandfather  on  the  mother's  side  was 
called  Pierre  Machon  and  lived  at  Ozan. 
In  1732  she  married,  at  Chevroux,  a  man 

155 


Our  Eternity 

named  Carteron,  by  whom  she  had  two  chil- 
dren, both  of  whom  she  lost. 

"Before  her  incarnation,  Philomene  had 
been  a  little  girl,  who  died  in  infancy. 
Previous  to  that,  she  was  a  man  who  had 
committed  murder;  and  it  was  to  expiate 
this  crime  that  she  endured  much  suffering 
in  the  darkness,  even  after  her  life  as  a  little 
girl,  when  she  had  had  no  time  to  do  wrong. 
I  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  carry  the 
hypnosis  further,  because  the  subject  ap- 
peared exhausted  and  her  paroxysms  were 
painful  to  watch. 

"But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  noticed  one 
thing  which  would  tend  to  show  that  the 
revelations  of  these  mediums  rest  on  an 
objective  reality.  At  Voiron,  one  of  the 
regular  attendants  at  my  demonstrations  is  a 

young  girl,  Louise  .     She  possesses  a 

very  sedate  and  thoughtful  cast  of  mind,  not 
at  all  open  to  hypnotic  suggestion;  and  she 
has   in   a   very   high   degree   the  capacity 

156 


Our  Eternity 

(which  is  comparatively  common  in  a  lesser 
degree)  of  perceiving  the  magnetic  effluvia 
of  human  beings  and,  consequently,  the 
fluidic  body.  When  Josephine  revives  the 
memory  of  her  past,  a  luminous  aura  is 
observed  around  her  and  is  perceived  by 
Louise.  Now,  to  the  eyes  of  Louise,  this 
aura  becomes  dark  when  Josephine  is  in  the 
phase  separating  two  existences.  In  every 
instance,  there  is  a  strong  reaction  in  Jose- 
phine when  I  touch  points  where  Louise 
tells  me  that  she  perceives  the  aura,  whether 
it  be  dark  or  light." 


I  thought  it  well  to  give  the  report  of 
one  of  these  experiments  almost  in  extenso, 
because  those  who  maintain  the  palingenesic 
theory  find  in  these  the  only  appreciable 
argument  which  they  possess.  Colonel  de 
Rochas  renewed  them  more  than  once  with 
different  subjects.    Among  these  I  will  men- 

157 


Our  Eternity 

tlon  only  one,  a  girl  called  Marie  Mayo, 
whose  history  is  more  complicated  than 
Josephine's  and  whose  successive  reincarna- 
tions take  us  back  to  the  seventeenth  cent- 
ury and  carry  us  suddenly  to  Versailles, 
among  the  historical  personages  moving 
around  Louis  XIV. 

Let  us  add  that  Colonel  de  Rochas  is  not 
the  only  mesmerizer  who  has  obtained  reve- 
lations of  this  kind,  which  may  be  hence- 
forth classed  among  the  incontestable  facts 
of  hypnotism.  I  have  mentioned  his  alone 
because  they  offer  the  most  substantial  gua- 
rantees from  every  point  of  view. 

What  do  they  prove  ?  We  must  begin,  as 
in  all  questions  of  this  kind,  by  entertaining 
a.  certain  distrust  of  the  medium.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  all  mediums,  by  the 
very  nature  of  their  faculties,  are  Inclined  to 
imposture,  to  trickery.  I  know  that  Colonel 
de  Rochas,  like  Dr.  RIchet  and  like  Pro- 
fessor Lombroso,  was  occasionally  hoaxed. 

IS8 


Our  Eternity 

That  is  the  inherent  defect  of  the  machinery 
which  we  must  perforce  employ;  and  ex- 
periments of  this  sort  will  never  possess  the 
scientific  value  of  those  made  in  a  physical 
or  chemical  laboratory.  But  this  is  not  an 
a  priori  reason  for  denying  them  any  sort  of 
interest.  As  a  question  of  fact,  are  impos- 
ture and  trickery  possible  here?  Obviously, 
even  though  the  experiments  be  conducted 
under  the  strictest  superv-ision.  However 
complicated  it  may  be,  the  subject  can  have 
learned  his  lesson  and  can  cleverly  avoid  the 
traps  laid  for  him.  The  best  guarantee, 
when  all  is  said,  lies  in  his  good  faith  and 
his  moral  sense,  which  the  experimenters 
alone  are  in  a  position  to  test  and  to  know; 
and  for  that  we  must  trust  to  them.  Be- 
sides, they  neglect  no  precaution  necessary 
to  make  imposture  extremely  difficult. 
After  taking  the  subject,  by  means  of  trans- 
verse passes,  up  the  stream  of  his  life,  they 
make  him  come  down  the  same  stream;  and 

159 


Our  Eternity 

the  same  events  pass  in  the  reverse  order. 
Repeated  tests  and  counter-tests  always 
yield  identical  results;  and  the  medium 
never  hesitates  or  goes  astray  In  the  laby- 
rinth of  names,  dates  and  incidents/ 

Moreover,  it  would  be  requisite  for  these 
mediums,  who  are  generally  people  of 
merely  average  intelligence,  suddenly  to 
become  great  poets  In  order  thus  to  create, 
down  to  every  detail,  a  series  of  characters, 
differing  entirely  one  from  the  other,  in 
which  everything  is  in  keeping — gestures, 
voice,  temper,  mind,  thoughts,  feeling — and 
ever  ready  to  reply,  in  harmony  with  their 
inmost  nature,  to  the  most  unexpected  quest- 

*  In  order  to  hide  nothing  and  to  bring  all  the  docu- 
ments into  court,  we  may  point  out  that  Colonel  de 
Rochas  ascertained  upon  enquiry  that  the  subjects' 
revelations  concerning  their  former  existences  were 
inaccurate  in  several  particulars: 

"Their  narratives  were  also  full  of  anachronisms, 
which  disclosed  the  presence  of  normal  recollections 
among  the  suggestions  that  came  from  an  unknown 
source.  Nevertheless,  one  perfectly  indubitable  fact 
remains,  which  is  that  of  the  existence  of  certain 
visions  recurring  with  the  same  characteristics  in  the 
case  of  a  considerable  number  of  persons  unknown  to 
one  another." 

i6o 


Our  Eternity 

ions.  It  has  been  said  that  every  man  is  a 
Shakespeare  in  his  dreams;  but  have  we 
not  here  to  do  with  dreams  which,  in  their 
uniformity,  bear  a  singular  resemblance  to 
fact? 

I  think,  therefore,  that  we  may  be 
allowed,  until  we  receive  evidence  to  the 
contrary,  to  leave  fraud  out  of  the  question. 
Another  objection  that  might  be  raised,  as 
was  done  with  respect  to  the  Myers  phan- 
toms, is  the  insignificance  of  their  revela- 
tions from  beyond  the  grave.  I  would 
rather  look  on  this  as  an  argument  in  behalf 
of  their  good  faith.  Those  whose  imagina- 
tion is  rich  enough  to  create  the  wonderful 
persons  whom  we  see  living  in  their  sleep 
would  doubtless  find  no  great  difficulty  in 
inventing  a  few  fantastic  but  plausible  de- 
tails on  the  subject  of  the  next  world.  Not 
one  of  them  thinks  of  it.  They  are 
Christians  and  therefore  carry  deep  down 
in  themselves  the  traditional  terror  of  hell, 

1 61 


Our  Eternity 

the  fear  of  purgatory  and  the  vision  of  a 
paradise  full  of  angels  and  palms.  They 
never  allude  to  any  of  it.  Although  they  are 
most  often  ignorant  of  all  the  theories  of 
reincarnation,  they  conform  strictly  to  the 
theosophical  or  neospiritualistic  hypothesis 
and  are  unconsciously  faithful  to  it  in 
their  very  indefiniteness :  they  speak  vaguely 
of  "the  dark"  in  which  they  find  themselves. 
They  tell  nothing,  because  they  know 
nothing.  It  is  impossible,  apparently,  for 
them  to  give  any  account  of  a  state  that  is 
still  illumined.  In  fact,  it  is  very  likely,  if 
we  admit  the  hypothesis  of  reincarnation 
and  of  evolution  after  death,  that  nature, 
here  as  elsewhere,  does  not  proceed  by 
bounds.  There  is  no  special  reason  why  she 
should  take  a  prodigious  and  inconceivable 
leap  between  life  and  death. 

We  do  not  find  the  dramatic  change 
which,  at  first  thought,  we  are  rather  in- 
clined to  expect.     The  spirit  is  first  of  all 

162 


Our  Eternity- 
confused  at  losing  its  body  and  every  one 
of  its  familiar  ways;  it  only  recovers  itself 
by  degrees.  It  resumes  consciousness 
slowly.  This  consciousness  is  subsequently 
purified,  exalted  and  extended,  gradually 
and  indefinitely,  until,  reaching  other 
spheres,  the  principle  of  life  that  animates 
it  ceases  to  reincarnate  itself  and  loses  all 
contact  with  us.  This  would  explain  why 
we  never  have  any  but  minor  and  element- 
ary revelations. 

All  that  concerns  this  first  phase  of  the 
survival  is  fairly  probable,  even  to  those 
who  do  not  admit  the  theory  of  reincarna- 
tion. For  the  rest,  we  shall  see  presently 
that  the  solutions  which  man's  imagination 
finds  there  merely  change  the  question  and 
are  inadequate  and  provisional. 


We  now  come  to  the  most  serious  objec- 
tion,   that    of    suggestion.       Colonel    de 

163 


Our  Eternity 

Rochas  declares  that  he  and  all  the  other 
experimenters  who  have  given  themselves 
up  to  this  study  "have  not  only  avoided 
everything  that  could  put  the  subject  on  a 
definite  tack,  but  have  often  tried  In  vain 
to  lead  him  astray  by  different  suggestions." 
I  am  convinced  of  it:  there  can  be  no 
question  of  voluntary  suggestion.  But  do 
we  not  know  that,  in  these  regions,  un- 
conscious and  involuntary  suggestion  is 
often  more  powerful  and  effective  than  the 
other?  In  the  hackneyed  and  rather  child- 
ish experiment  of  table-turning,  for  in- 
stance, which,  after  all,  is  only  a  crude  and 
elementary  form  of  telepathy,  the  replies 
are  nearly  always  dictated  by  the  uncon- 
scious suggestion  of  a  participant  or  a  mere 
onlooker.^    We  should  therefore  first  of  all 

^  In  this  connexion  may  I  be  permitted  to  quote  a 
personal  experience?  One  evening,  at  the  Abbaye  de 
Saint-Wandrille,  where  I  am  wont  to  spend  my  sum- 
mers, some  newly-arrived  guests  were  amusing  them- 
selves by  making  a  small  table  spin  on  its  foot.  I  was 
quietly  smoking  in  a  corner  of  the  drawing-room,  at 
some  distance  from  the  little  table,  taking  no  interest  in 

164 


Our  Eternity 

have  to  make  sure  that  neither  the  hypno- 
tizer  nor  the  onlookers,  nor  yet  the  subject 
himself,  have  ever  heard  of  the  reincarnated 
persons.  It  will  be  enough,  I  shall  be  told, 
to  employ  for  the  counter-tests  another 
operator  and  different  onlookers,  who  are 
ignorant  of  the  previous  revelations.     Yes, 

what  was  happening  around  it  and  thinking  of  some- 
thing quite  different.  After  due  entreaty,  the  table 
replied  that  it  held  the  spirit  of  a  seventeenth-century 
monk,  who  was  buried  in  the  east  gallery  of  the 
cloisters,  under  a  flagstone  dated  1693.  After  the  de- 
,parture  of  the  monk,  who  suddenly,  for  no  apparent 
reason,  refused  to  continue  the  interview,  we  thought 
that  we  would  go,  with  a  lamp,  and  look  for  the 
grave.  We  ended  by  discovering,  in  the  far  cloister, 
on  the  eastern  side,  a  tombstone  in  very  bad  condition, 
broken,  worn  down,  trodden  into  the  ground  and 
crumbling,  on  which,  by  examining  it  very  closely,  we 
were  able,  with  great  difficulty,  to  decipher  the 
inscription  "a.d.  1693."  Now,  at  the  moment  of  the 
monk's  reply,  there  was  no  one  in  the  drawing-room 
except  my  guests  and  myself.  None  of  them  knew 
the  abbey;  they  had  arrived  that  very  evening,  a  few 
minutes  before  dinner,  after  which,  as  it  was  quite 
dark,  they  had  put  off  their  visit  to  the  cloisters  and 
the  ruins  until  the  following  day.  Therefore,  short  of 
a  belief  in  the  "'shells"  or  the  "elementals"  of  the 
theosophists,  the  revelation  could  only  have  come  from 
me.  Nevertheless,  I  believed  myself  to  be  absolutely 
ignorant  of  the  existence  of  that  particular  tombstone, 
one  (>f  the  least  legible  among  a  score  of  others,  all 
belonging  to  the  seventeenth  century,  which  pave  this 
part  of  the  cloisters. 

165 


Our  Eternity 

but  the  subject  is  not  ignorant  of  them; 
and  it  is  possible  that  the  first  suggestion 
has  been  so  profound  that  it  will  remain  for 
ever  stamped  upon  the  unconsciousness  and 
that  it  will  reproduce  the  same  incarnations 
indefinitely,  in  the  same  order. 

All  this  does  not  mean  that  the  phenom- 
ena of  suggestion  are  not  themselves  laden 
with  mysteries;  but  that  is  another  question. 
For  the  moment,  as  we  see,  the  problem  is 
almost  insoluble  and  control  impracticable. 
Meanwhile,  since  we  have  to  choose  be- 
tween reincarnation  and  suggestion,  it  is 
right  that  we  should  confine  ourselves,  in  the 
first  instance,  to  the  latter,  in  accordance 
with  the  principles  which  we  have  observed 
In  the  case  of  automatic  speech  and  writing. 
Between  two  unknowns,  common  sense  and 
prudence  decree  that  we  should  turn  first  to 
the  one  on  whose  frontiers  lie  certain  facts 
more   frequently  recorded,  the  one  which 

shows  a   few   familiar  glimmers.     Let  us 

i66 


Our  Eternity- 
exhaust  the  mystery  of  our  life  before  for- 
saking it  for  the  mystery  of  our  death. 
Throughout  this  vast  expanse  of  treach- 
erous ground,  it  is  important  that,  until 
fresh  evidence  arrives,  we  should  keep  to 
one  inflexible  rule,  namely,  that  thought- 
transference  exists  as  long  as  it  Is  not  abso- 
lutely and  physically  impossible  for  the  sub- 
ject or  some  person  in  the  room  to  have 
cognizance  of  the  incident  in  question, 
whether  the  cognizance  be  conscious  or 
not,  forgotten  or  actual.  Even  this  gau- 
rantee  is  not  sufficient,  for  It  is  still 
possible,  as  we  saw  In  the  case  of  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge's  watch,  for  some  one  tak- 
ing no  part  in  the  sitting  and  even  very 
far  away  from  it  to  be  placed  In  communica- 
tion with  the  medium  by  some  unknown 
means  and  to  influence  the  medium  at  a  dis- 
tance and  unwittingly.  Lastly,  to  provide 
for  every  contingency,  before  letting  death 
come  upon  the  boards,  it  would  be  necessary 

167 


Our  Eternity 

to  make  certain  that  atavistic  memory  does 
not  play  an  unforeseen  part.  Cannot  a  man, 
for  instance,  carry  hidden  in  the  depths  of 
his  being  the  recollection  of  events  con- 
nected with  the  childhood  of  an  ancestor 
whom  he  has  never  seen  and  communicate  it 
to  the  medium  by  unconscious  suggestion? 
It  is  not  impossible.  We  carry  in  ourselves 
all  the  past,  all  the  experience  of  our  ances- 
tors. If,  by  some  magic,  we  could  illumine 
the  prodigious  treasures  of  the  subconscious 
memory,  why  should  we  not  there  discover 
the  events  and  facts  that  form  the  sources 
of  that  experience?  Before  turning  to- 
wards yonder  unknown,  we  must  utterly  ex- 
haust the  possibilities  of  this  terrestrial  un- 
known. It  is,  moreover,  remarkable  but  un- 
deniable that,  despite  the  strictness  of  a  law 
which  seems  to  shut  out  every  other  ex- 
planation, despite  the  almost  unlimited  and 
probably  excessive  scope  allotted  to  the  do- 
main of  suggestion,  there  nevertheless  re- 

i68 


Our  Eternity 

main  some   facts   which  perhaps   call   for 
another  interpretation. 

But  let  us  return  to  reincarnation  and 
recognize,  in  passing,  that  it  is  very  regret- 
table that  the  arguments  of  the  theosophists 
and  neospiritualists  are  not  compelling,  for 
there  never  was  a  more  beautiful,  a  juster, 
a  purer,  a  more  moral,  fruitful  and  con- 
soling, nor,  to  a  certain  point,  a  more  prob- 
able creed  than  theirs.  It  alone,  with  its  doc- 
trine of  successive  expiations  and  purifica- 
tions, accounts  for  all  the  physical  and  in- 
tellectual inequalities,  all  the  social  iniqui- 
ties, all  the  hideous  injustices  of  fate.  But 
the  quality  of  a  creed  is  no  evidence  of  its 
truth.  Even  though  it  is  the  religion  of  six 
hundred  millions  of  mankind,  the  nearest  to 
the  mysterious  origins,  the  only  one  that  is 
not  odious  and  the  least  absurd  of  all,  it 
will  have  to  do  what  the  others  have  not 
done,   to  bring  unimpeachable   testimony; 


169 


Our  Eternity 

and  what  It  has  given  us  hitherto  is  but  the 
first  shadow  of  a  proof  begun. 

4 

And  even  that  would  not  put  an  end  to 
the  riddle.  In  principle,  reincarnation, 
sooner  or  later,  is  inevitable,  since  nothing 
can  be  lost  nor  remain  stationary.  What 
has  not  been  demonstrated  in  any  way  and 
will  perhaps  remain  indemonstrable  is  the 
reincarnation  of  the  whole  Identical  in- 
dividual, notwithstanding  the  abolition  of 
memory.  But  what  matters  to  him  that 
reincarnation.  If  he  be  unaware  that  he  is 
still  himself?  All  the  problems  of  the  con- 
scious survival  of  man  start  up  anew;  and 
we  have  to  begin  all  over  again.  Even  if 
scientifically  established,  the  doctrine  of 
reincarnation,  just  like  that  of  a  survival, 
would  not  set  a  term  to  our  questions.  It 
replies  to  neither  the  first  nor  the  last,  those 
of  the  beginning  and  the  end,  the  only  ones 

170 


Our  Eternity 

that  are  essential.  It  simply  shifts  them, 
pushes  them  a  few  hundreds,  a  few 
thousands  of  years  back,  in  the  hope,  per- 
haps, of  losing  or  forgetting  them  in  silence 
and  space.  But  they  have  come  from  the 
depths  of  the  most  prodigious  infinities  and 
are  not  content  with  a  tardy  solution.  I  am 
most  certainly  interested  in  learning  what  is 
in  store  for  me,  what  will  happen  to  me 
immediately  after  my  death.    You  tell  me: 

"Man,  in  his  successiv^e  incarnations, 
will  make  atonement  by  suffering,  will  be 
purified,  in  order  that  he  may  ascend  from 
sphere  to  sphere  until  he  returns  to  the 
divine  essence  whence  he  sprang." 

I  am  willing  to  believe  it,  notwithstand- 
ing that  all  this  still  bears  the  somewhat 
questionable  stamp  of  our  little  earth  and 
its  old  religions;  I  am  willing  to  believe  it, 
but  even  then?  What  matters  to  me  is  not 
what  will  be  for  some  time,  but  what  will 
be  for  always;    and  your  divine  principle 

171 


Our  Eternity 

appears  to  me  not  at  all  infinite  nor  definite. 
It  even  seems  to  me  greatly  inferior  to  that 
which  I  conceive  without  your  help.  Now, 
if  it  were  based  on  thousands  of  facts,  a 
religion  that  belittles  the  God  conceived  by 
my  loftiest  thought  could  never  dominate 
my  conscience.  Your  infinity  or  your  God, 
while  even  more  unintelligible  than  mine,  is 
nevertheless  smaller.  If  I  be  again  im- 
merged  in  Him,  it  means  that  I  emerged 
from  Him ;  if  it  be  possible  for  me  to  have 
emerged  from  Him,  then  He  is  not  infinite; 
and,  if  He  be  not  infinite,  what  is  He  ?  We 
must  accept  one  thing  or  the  other:  either 
He  purifies  me  because  I  am  outside  Him 
and  He  is  not  infinite;  or,  being  infinite,  if 
He  purify  me,  then  there  was  something 
impure  in  Him,  because  it  is  a  part  of  Him- 
self which  He  is  purifying  in  me.  More- 
over, how  can  we  admit  that  this  God  who 
has  existed  for  all  time,  who  has  the  same 
infinity  of  millenaries  behind  Him   as   in 

172 


Our  Eternity 

front  of  Him,  should  not  yet  have  found 
time  to  purify  Himself  and  put  a  period  to 
His  trials?    What  He  was  not  able  to  do 
in  the  eternity  previous  to  the  moment  of 
my  existence  He  will  not  be  able  to  do  in 
the   subsequent   eternity,    for  the   two   are 
equal.     And  the  same  question  presents  it- 
self where  I  am  concerned.     My  principle 
of  life,  like  His,  exists  from  all  eternity, 
for  my  emergence  out  of  nothing  would  be 
more  difficult  of  explanation  than  my  exist- 
ence without  a  beginning.     I  have  neces- 
sarily had  innumerable  opportunities  of  in- 
carnating myself;  and  I  have  probably  done 
so,    seeing    that    it    is    hardly    likely    that 
the  idea  only  came  to  me  yesterday.    All  the 
chances  of  reaching  my  goal  have  therefore 
been  offered  to  me  in  the  past;  and  all  those 
which  I  shall  find  in  the  future  will  add 
nothing  to  the  number,  which  was  already 
infinite.    There  is  not  much  to  say  in  answer 
to   these    interrogations   which   spring    up 

173 


Our  Eternity 

everywhence  the  moment  our  thought 
glances  upon  them.  Meanwhile,  I  had  rather 
know  that  I  know  nothing  than  feed  myself 
on  illusory  and  irreconcilable  assertions. 
I  had  rather  keep  to  an  Infinity  whose  in- 
comprehensibility has  no  bounds  than 
restrict  myself  to  a  God  whose  incompre- 
hensibility Is  limited  on  every  side.  Nothing 
compels  you  to  speak  of  your  God;  but,  if 
you  take  upon  yourself  to  do  so,  it  is  neces- 
sary that  your  explanations  should  be 
superior  to  the  silence  which  they  break. 

5 

It  is  true  that  the  scientific  spiritualists 
do  not  venture  as  far  as  this  God;  but  then, 
tight-pressed  between  the  two  riddles  of  the 
beginning  and  the  end,  they  have  almost 
nothing  to  tell  us.  They  follow  the  tracks 
of  our  dead  for  a  few  seconds.  In  a  world 
where  seconds  no  longer  count;  and  then 
they  abandon  them  in  the  darkness.     I  do 

174 


Our  Eternity 

not  reproach  them,  because  we  have  here  to 
do  with  things  which,  in  all  probability,  we 
shall  not  know  in  the  day  when  we  shall 
think  that  we  know  everything.  I  do  not 
ask  that  they  shall  reveal  to  me  the  secret 
of  the  universe,  for  I  do  not  believe,  like  a 
child,  that  this  secret  can  be  expressed  in 
three  words  or  that  it  can  enter  my  brain 
without  bursting  it.  I  am  even  persuaded 
that  beings  who  might  be  millions  of  times 
more  intelligent  than  the  most  intelligent 
among  us  would  not  yet  possess  it,  for  this 
secret  must  be  as  infinite,  as  unfathomable, 
as  inexhaustible  as  the  universe  itself.  The 
fact  none  the  less  remains  that  this  inability 
to  go  even  a  few  years  beyond  the  life  after 
death  detracts  greatly  from  the  interest  of 
their  experiments  and  revelations;  at  best, 
it  is  but  a  short  space  gained;  and  it  is  not 
by  this  juggling  on  the  threshold  that  our 
fate  is  decided.  I  am  ready  to  pass  over 
what  may  befall  me  in  the  short  interval 

1/5 


Our  Eternity 

filled  by  those  revelations,  as  I  am  even  now 
passing  over  what  befalls  me  in  my  life. 
My  destiny  does  not  lie  there,  nor  my  home. 
I  do  not  doubt  that  the  facts  reported  are 
genuine  and  proved ;  but  what  is  even  much 
more  certain  is  that  the  dead,  if  they  sur- 
vive, have  not  a  great  deal  to  teach  us, 
whether  because,  at  the  moment  when  they 
can  speak  to  us,  they  have  nothing  yet  to 
tell  us,  or  because,  at  the  moment  when  they 
might  have  something  to  reveal  to  us,  they 
are  no  longer  able  to  do  so,  but  withdraw 
for  ever  and  lose  sight  of  us  in  the  immen- 
sity which  they  are  exploring. 


176 


CHAPTER     IX 


THE      FATE      OF      OUR 
CONSCIOUSNESS 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE       FATE      OF      OUR 
CONSCIOUSNESS 


LET  US  dispense  with  their  uncertain  aid 
and  endeavour  to  make  our  way  to  the 
other  side  alone.  To  return,  then,  to  the 
theories  which  we  were  examining  before 
these  necessary  digressions,  it  would  seem 
that  survival  with  our  present  consciousness 
is  nearly  as  impossible  and  as  incompre- 
hensible as  total  annihilation.  Moreover, 
even  if  it  were  admissible,  it  could  not  be 
dreadful.  It  is  certain  that,  when  the  body 
disappears,  all  physical  sufferings  will  dis- 
appear at  the  same  time;  for  we  cannot 
imagine  a  spirit  suffering  in  a  body  which  it 
no  longer  possesses.  With  them  will  vanish 
simultaneously  all  that  we  call  mental  or 
moral  sufferings,  seeing  that  all  of  them,  if 

179 


Our  Eternity 

we  examine  them  well,  spring  from  the  ties 
and  habits  of  our  senses.  Our  spirit  feels 
the  reaction  of  the  sufferings  of  our  body, 
or  of  the  bodies  that  surround  it;  it  cannot 
suffer  in  itself  or  through  Itself.  Slighted 
affection,  shattered  love,  disappointments, 
failures,  despair,  betrayal,  personal  humilia- 
tions, as  well  as  the  sorrows  and  the  loss  of 
those  whom  it  loves,  acquire  their  potent 
sting  only  by  passing  through  the  body 
which  It  animates.  Outside  its  own  pain, 
which  is  the  pain  of  not  knowing,  the  spirit, 
once  delivered  from  Its  flesh,  could  suffer 
only  in  the  recollection  of  the  flesh.  It  is 
possible  that  It  still  grieves  over  the  troubles 
of  those  whom  it  has  left  behind  on  earth. 
But  to  its  eyes,  since  it  no  longer  reckons 
the  days,  these  troubles  will  seem  so  brief 
that  It  will  not  grasp  their  duration;  and, 
knowing  what  they  are  and  knowing 
whither  they  lead,  it  will  not  behold  their 
severity. 

i8o 


Our  Eternity 

The  spirit  is  insensible  to  all  that  is  not 
happiness.  It  Is  made  only  for  infinite  joy, 
which  is  the  joy  of  knowing  and  understand- 
ing. It  can  grieve  only  at  perceiving  its 
own  limits;  but  to  perceive  those  limits, 
when  there  are  no  more  bounds  to  space 
and  time.  Is  already  to  transcend  them. 


It  is  now  a  question  of  knowing  whether 
that  spirit,  sheltered  from  all  sorrow,  will 
remain  Itself,  will  perceive  and  recognize 
Itself  in  the  bosom  of  infinity;  and  up  to 
what  point  It  Is  Important  that  It  should 
recognize  itself.  This  brings  us  to  the 
problems  of  survival  without  consciousness, 
or  survival  with  a  consciousness  different 
from  that  of  to-day. 

Survival  without  consciousness  seems  at 
first  sight  the  more  probable.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  good  or  ill  awaiting  us 
on  the  other  side  of  the  grave  it  amounts 

i8i 


Our  Eternity 

to  annihilation.  It  is  lawful,  therefore,  for 
those  who  prefer  the  easiest  solution  and 
that  most  consistent  with  the  present  state 
of  human  thought  to  limit  their  anxiety  to 
that.  They  have  nothing  to  dread;  for, 
on  close  inspection,  every  fear,  if  any  re- 
mained, should  deck  itself  with  hopes.  The 
body  disintegrates  and  can  no  longer  suffer; 
the  mind,  separated  from  the  source  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  is  extinguished,  scattered 
and  lost  in  a  boundless  darkness;  and  what 
comes  is  the  great  peace  so  often  prayed 
for,  the  sleep  without  measure,  without 
dreams  and  without  awakening. 

But  this  is  only  a  solution  that  fosters 
indolence.  If  we  press  those  who  speak  of 
survival  without  consciousness,  we  perceive 
that  they  mean  only  their  present  conscious- 
ness, for  man  conceives  no  other;  and  we 
have  just  seen  that  it  is  almost  impossible 
for  that  m.anner  of  consciousness  to  persist 
in  infinity. 

1S2 


Our  Eternity 

Unless,  indeed,  they  would  deny  every 
sort  of  consciousness,  even  that  cosmic  con- 
sciousness into  which  their  own  will  fall. 
But  this  were  to  solve  very  quickly  and  very 
blindly,  with  a  stroke  of  the  sword  in  the 
night,  the  greatest  and  most  mysterious 
question  that  can  arise  in  a  man's  bram. 

3 

It  is  evident  that,  in  the  depths  of  our 
thought  limited  on  every  side,  we  shall 
never  be  able  to  form  the  least  idea  of  an 
infinite  consciousness.  There  is  even  an 
essential  antinomy  between  the  words  con- 
sciousness and  infinity.  To  speak  of  con- 
sciousness is  to  mean  the  most  definite 
thing  conceivable  in  the  finite;  conscious- 
ness, properly  speaking,  is  the  finite  huddled 
into  itself  in  order  to  discover  and  feel  its 
closest  limits,  to  the  end  that  it  may  enjoy 
them  as  closely  as  possible.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  separate  the 

183 


Our  Eternity 

idea  of  intelligence  from  the  idea  of  con- 
sciousness. Any  intelligence  that  does  not 
seem  capable  of  transforming  itself  into  con- 
sciousness becomes  for  us  a  mysterious  phe- 
nomenon to  which  we  give  names  more 
mysterious  still,  lest  we  should  have  to 
admit  that  we  understand  nothing  of  it  at 
all.  Now,  on  this  little  earth  of  ours, 
which  is  but  a  dot  in  space,  we  see  expended 
in  every  scale  of  life  (remember,  for  in- 
stance, the  wonderful  combinations  and 
organisms  of  the  insect  world),  a  mass  of 
intelligence  so  vast  that  our  human  intelli- 
gence cannot  even  dream  of  assessing  it. 
Everything  that  exists — and  man  first  of 
all — is  incessantly  drawing  upon  that  in- 
exhaustible reserve.  We  are  therefore 
irresistibly  driven  to  ask  ourselves  if  that 
cosmic  intelligence  is  not  the  emanation  of 
an  Infinite  consciousness,  or  if  it  must  not, 
sooner  or  later,  elaborate  one.  And  this 
sets  us    tossing    between    two    irreducible 

184 


Our  Eternity 

impossibilities.  What  is  most  probable  is 
that  here  again  we  are  judging  everything 
from  the  lowlands  of  our  anthropomor- 
phism. At  the  summit  of  our  infinitesimal 
life,  we  see  only  intelligence  and  conscious- 
ness, the  extreme  point  of  thought;  and 
from  this  we  infer  that,  at  the  summits  of 
all  lives,  there  could  be  naught  but  intelli- 
gence and  consciousness,  whereas  these  per- 
haps occupy  only  an  inferior  place  in  the 
hierarchy  of  spiritual  or  other  possibilities. 

4 

Survival  absolutely  denuded  of  conscious- 
ness would,  therefore,  be  possible  only  If 
we  denied  a  cosmic  consciousness.  As  soon 
as  we  admit  this  consciousness,  under  what- 
soever- form,  we  are  bound  to  share  in  it; 
and,  up  to  a  certain  point,  the  question  is 
indistinguishable  from  that  of  the  contin- 
uance of  a  more  or  less  modified  conscious- 
ness.    There  is,  for  the  moment,  no  hope 

i8s 


Our  Eternity 

of  solving  it;  but  we  are  free  to  grope  in 
its  darkness,  which  is  not  perhaps  equally 
dense  at  all  points. 

Here  begins  the  open  sea.  Here  begins 
the  glorious  adventure,  the  only  one  abreast 
with  human  curiosity,  the  only  one  that 
soars  as  high  as  its  highest  longing.  Let  us 
accustom  ourselves  to  regard  death  as  a 
form  of  life  which  we  do  not  yet  under- 
stand; let  us  learn  to  look  upon  it  with  the 
same  eye  that  looks  upon  birth;  and  soon 
our  mind  will  be  accompanied  to  the  steps 
of  the  tomb  with  the  same  glad  expectation 
that  greets  a  birth. 

Suppose  that  a  child  in  its  mother's  womb 
were  endowed  with  a  certain  consciousness ; 
that  unborn  twins,  for  instance,  could,  in 
some  obscure  fashion,  exchange  their  im- 
pressions and  communicate  their  hopes  and 
fears  to  each  other.  Having  known  naught 
but  the  warm  maternal  shades,  they  would 
not  feel  straitened  nor  unhappy  there.  They 

i86 


Our  Eternity 

would  probably  have  no  other  Idea  than  to 
prolong  as  long  as  possible  that  life  of 
abundance  free  from  cares  and  of  sleep  free 
from  alarms.  But  if,  even  as  we  are  aware 
that  we  must  die,  they  too  knew  that  they 
must  be  born,  that  is  to  say,  suddenly  leave 
the  shelter  of  that  gentle  darkness  and 
abandon  for  ever  that  captive  but  peaceful 
existence,  to  be  precipitated  into  an  abso- 
lutely different,  unimaginable  and  boundless 
world,  how  great  would  be  their  anxieties 
and  their  fears  !  And  yet  there  is  no  reason 
why  our  own  anxieties  and  fears  should  be 
more  justified  and  less  ridiculous.  The 
character,  the  spirit,  the  intentions,  the 
benevolence  or  the  Indifference  of  the  un- 
known to  which  we  are  subject  do  not  alter 
between  our  birth  and  our  death.  We  re- 
main always  In  the  same  infinity,  in  the  same 
universe.  It  is  perfectly  reasonable  and 
legitimate  to  persuade  ourselves  that  the 
tomb  is  no  more  dreadful  than  the  cradle. 

187 


Our  Eternity- 
It  would  even  be  legitimate  and  reasonable 
to  accept  the  cradle  only  on  account  of  the 
tomb.  If,  before  being  born,  we  were  per- 
mitted to  choose  between  the  great  peace  of 
non-existence  and  a  life  that  should  not  be 
completed  by  the  glorious  hour  of  death, 
which  of  us,  knowing  what  he  ought  to 
know,  would  accept  the  disquieting  problem 
of  an  existence  that  would  not  lead  to  the 
reassuring  mystery  of  its  end?  Which  of 
us  would  wish  to  come  into  a  world  where 
we  can  learn  so  little,  if  he  did  not  know 
that  he  must  enter  it  if  he  would  leave  it  and 
learn  more?  The  best  thing  about  life  is 
that  it  prepares  this  hour  for  us,  that  it  is 
the  one  and  only  road  leading  to  the  magic 
gateway  and  into  that  incomparable  mystery 
where  misfortunes  and  sufferings  will  no 
longer  be  possible,  because  we  shall  have 
lost  the  body  that  produced  them;  where 
the  worst  that  can  befall  us  is  the  dreamless 
sleep  which  we  number  among  the  greatest 

i88 


Our  Eternity 

boons  on  earth;  where,  lastly,  it  is  almost 
unimaginable  that  a  thought  should  not  sur- 
vive to  mingle  with  the  substance  of  the 
universe,  that  is  to  say,  with  infinity,  which, 
if  it  be  not  a  waste  of  indifference,  can  be 
nothing  but  a  sea  of  joy. 

5 

Before  fathoming  that  sea,  let  us  remark 

to  those  who  aspire  to  maintain  their  ego 

that  they  are  calling  for  the  sufferings  which 

they  dread.     The  ego  implies  limits.     The 

ego  cannot  subsist  except  in  so  far  as  it  is 

separated   from   that  which   surrounds    it. 

The    stronger    the    ego,    the    narrower    its 

limits  and  the  clearer  the  separation.    The 

more  painful  too;  for  the  mind,  if  it  remain 

as  we  know   it — and  we   are  not  able  to 

imagine  it  different — will   no  sooner  have 

seen  its  limits  than  it  will  wish  to  overstep 

them;   and,    the   more   separated   it    feels, 

the  greater  will  be  its  longing  to  unite  with 

189 


Our  Eternity 

that  which  lies  outside.  There  will  there- 
fore be  an  eternal  struggle  between  its  being 
and  its  aspirations.  And  really  it  would 
have  served  no  object  to  be  born  and  die 
only  to  arrive  at  these  interminable  contests. 
Have  we  not  here  yet  one  more  proof  that 
our  ego,  as  we  conceive  it,  could  never  sub- 
sist in  the  infinity  where  it  must  needs  go, 
since  it  cannot  go  elsewhere  ?  It  behooves 
us  therefore  to  clear  away  conceptions  that 
emanate  only  from  our  body,  even  as  the 
mists  that  veil  the  daylight  from  our  sight 
emanate  only  from  the  lowlands.  Pascal 
has  said,  once  and  for  all : 

"The  narrow  limits  of  our  being  conceal 
Infinity  from  our  view." 


On  the  other  hand — for  we  must  keep 
nothing  back,  nor  turn  from  the  adverse 
darkness  should  it  seem  nearest  to  the  truth, 
nor  show  any  bias — on  the  other  hand,  we 

390 


Our  Eternity 

can  grant  to  those  who  yearn  to  remain  as 
they  are  that  the  survival  of  an  atom  of 
themselves  would  suffice  for  a  new  entrance 
into  an  infinity  from  which  their  body  no 
longer  separates  them. 

If  it  seems  Impossible  that  anything — a 
movement,  a  vibration,  a  radiation — should 
stop  or  disappear,  why,  then,  should 
thought  be  lost?  There  will,  no  doubt, 
subsist  more  than  one  Idea  powerful 
enough  to  allure  the  new  ego,  which  will 
nourish  Itself  and  thrive  on  all  that  It  will 
find  In  that  boundless  environment,  just  as 
the  other  ego,  on  this  earth,  nourished  Itself 
and  throve  on  all  that  It  met  there.  Since 
we  have  been  able  to  acquire  our  present 
consciousness,  why  should  it  be  Impossible 
for  us  to  acquire  another?  For  that  ego 
which  Is  so  dear  to  us  and  which  we  believe 
ourselves  to  possess  was  not  made  in  a  day; 
it  is  not  at  present  what  it  was  at  the  hour 
of  our  birth.     Much  more  chance  than  pur- 

191 


Our  Eternity 

pose  has  entered  into  it;  and  much  more 
foreign  substance  than  any  inborn  substance 
which  it  contained.  It  is  but  a  long  series 
of  acquisitions  and  transformations,  of 
which  we  do  not  become  aware  until  the 
awakening  of  our  memory;  and  its  kernel, 
of  which  we  do  not  know  the  nature.  Is 
perhaps  more  Immaterial  and  less  concrete 
than  a  thought.  If  the  new  environment 
which  we  enter  on  leaving  our  mother's 
womb  transforms  us  to  such  a  point  that 
there  is,  so  to  speak,  no  connexion  between 
the  embryo  that  we  were  and  the  man  that 
we  have  become,  Is  It  not  right  to  think  that 
the  far  newer,  stranger,  wider  and  richer 
environment  which  we  enter  on  quitting  life 
will  transform  us  even  more?  We  can  see 
In  what  happens  to  us  here  a  figure  of  what 
awaits  us  elsewhere  and  can  readily  admit 
that  our  spiritual  being,  liberated  from  its 
body,  if  It  does  not  mingle  at  the  first  onset 
Vv'lth  the  Infinite,  will  develop  itself  there 

192 


Our  Eternity 

gradually,  will  choose  itself  a  substance' 
and,  no  longer  trammelled  by  space  and 
time,  will  go  on  for  ever  growing.  It  is 
very  possible  that  our  loftiest  wishes  of  to- 
day will  become  the  law  of  our  future  de- 
velopment. It  is  very  possible  that  our  best 
thoughts  will  welcome  us  on  the  farther 
shore  and  that  the  quality  of  our  intellect 
will  determine  that  of  the  infinite  which 
crystallizes  around  it.  Every  hypothesis  is 
permissible  and  every  question,  provided  it 
be  addressed  to  happiness;  for  unhappiness 
is  no  longer  able  to  answer  it.  It  finds  no 
place  in  the  human  imagination  that 
methodically  explores  the  future.  And, 
whatever  be  the  force  that  survives  us  and 
presides  over  our  existence  in  the  other 
world,  this  existence,  to  presume  the  worst, 
could  be  no  less  great,  no  less  happy  than 
that  of  to-day.  It  will  have  no  other  career 
than  infinity;  and  infinity  is  nothing  if  it 
be  not  felicity.     In  any  case,  it  seems  fairly 

193 


Our  Eternity 

certain  that  we  spend  in  this  world  the  only 
narrow,  grudging,  obscure  and  sorrowful 
moment  of  our  destiny. 


We  have  said  that  the  peculiar  sorrow  of 
the  mind  is  the  sorrow  of  not  knowing  or 
not  understanding,  which  includes  the  sor- 
row of  being  powerless;  for  he  who 
knows  the  supreme  causes,  being  no  longer 
paralyzed  by  matter,  becomes  one  with 
them  and  acts  with  them;  and  he  who 
understands  ends  by  approving,  or  else  the 
universe  would  be  a  mistake,  which  is  not 
possible,  an  infinite  mistake  being  incon- 
ceivable. I  do  not  believe  that  another 
sorrow  of  the  sheer  mind  can  be  imagined. 
The  only  sorrow  which,  at  first  thought, 
might  seem  admissible — and  which,  in  any 
case,  could  be  but  ephemeral — would  arise 
from   the  sight   of   the   pain   and   misery 

194 


Our  Eternity 

remaining  on  the  earth  which  we  have  left. 
But  this  sorrow,  after  all,  would  be  but  one 
aspect  and  an  insignificant  phase  of  the 
sorrow  of  being  powerless  and  of  not  under- 
standing. As  for  the  latter,  though  it  is 
not  only  beyond  the  domain  of  our  intelli- 
gence, but  even  at  an  insuperable  distance 
from  our  imagination,  we  may  say  that  it 
would  be  intolerable  only  if  it  were  without 
hope.  But,  for  that,  the  universe  would 
have  to  abandon  any  attempt  to  understand 
itself,  or  else  admit  within  itself  an  object 
that  remained  for  ever  foreign  to  it.  Either 
the  mind  will  not  perceive  its  limits  and, 
consequently,  will  not  suffer  from  them,  or 
else  it  will  overstep  them  as  it  perceives 
them ;  for  how  could  the  universe  have 
parts  eternally  condemned  to  form  no  part 
of  itself  and  of  its  knowledge?  Hence  we 
cannot  understand  that  the  torture  of  not 
understanding,  supposing  it  to  exist  for  a 
moment,  should  not  end  by  absorption  in 


Our  Eternity 

the  state  of  infinity,  which,  if  it  be  not 
happiness  as  we  comprehend  it,  could  be 
naught  but  an  indifference  higher  and  purer 
than  joy. 


196 


CHAPTER    X 


THE     TWO     ASPECTS     OF 
INFINITY 


CHAPTER   X 

THE      TWO     ASPECTS      OF 
INFINITY 


LET  us  turn  our  thoughts  towards  it. 
The  problem  goes  beyond  humanity 
and  embraces  all  things.  It  is  possible,  I 
think,  to  view  infinity  under  two  distinct 
aspects.  Let  us  contemplate  the  first  of 
them.  We  are  plunged  in  a  universe  that 
has  no  limits  in  space  or  time.  It  can  neither 
go  forward  nor  go  back.  It  has  no  origin. 
It  never  began,  nor  will  it  ever  end.  The 
myriads  of  years  behind  it  are  even  as  the 
myriads  which  it  has  yet  to  unroll.  From 
all  time  it  has  been  at  the  boundless  centre 
of  the  days.  It  could  have  no  aim,  for,  if 
it  had  one,  it  would  have  attained  it  in  the 
infinity  of  the  years   that   lie   behind   us; 

besides,  that  aim  would  be  outside  itself 

199 


Our  Eternity 

and,  If  there  were  anything  outside  It,  It 
would  be  bounded  by  that  thing  and  would 
cease  to  be  infinity.  It  is  not  making  for 
anywhere,  for  it  would  have  arrived  there ; 
consequently,  all  that  the  worlds  within  Its 
pale,  all  that  we  ourselves  do  can  have  no 
Influence  upon  it.  All  that  It  will  do  It  has 
done.  All  that  It  has  not  done  remains 
undone  because  it  can  never  do  It.  If  It 
have  no  mind,  It  will  never  have  one.  If 
it  have  one,  that  mind  has  been  at  its  climax 
from  all  time  and  will  remain  there,  change- 
less and  Immovable.  It  is  as  young  as  it 
has  ever  been  and  as  old  as  It  will  ever  be. 
It  has  made  In  the  past  all  the  efforts  and 
all  the  trials  which  It  will  make  in  the 
future;  and,  as  all  the  possible  combina- 
tions have  been  exhausted  since  what  we 
cannot  even  call  the  beginning,  it  does  not 
seem  as  If  that  which  has  not  taken  place 
in  the  eternity  that  stretches  before  our 
birth  can  happen  In  the  eternity  that  will 

200 


Our  Eternity 

follow  our  death.  If  it  have  not  become 
conscious,  it  will  never  become  conscious; 
if  it  know  not  what  it  wishes,  it  will  continue 
in  ignorance,  hopelessly,  knowing  all  or 
knowing  nothing  and  remaining  as  near  its 
end  as  its  beginning. 

This  is  the  gloomiest  thought  to  which 
man  can  attain.  So  far,  I  do  not  think  that 
its  depths  have  been  sufficiently  sounded. 
If  it  were  really  irrefutable — and  some 
may  contend  that  it  is — if  it  actually  con- 
tained the  last  word  of  the  great  riddle,  it 
would  be  almost  impossible  to  live  in  its 
shadow.  Naught  save  the  certainty  that 
our  conceptions  of  time  and  space  are 
illusive  and  absurd  can  lighten  the  abyss 
wherein  our  last  hope  would  perish. 


This  universe  thus  conceived  would  be, 
if  not  intelligible,  at  least  admissible  by  our 
reason;  but  in  that  universe  float  billions  of 

20I 


Our  Eternity 

worlds  limited  by  space  and  time.     They 
are  born,  they  die  and  they  are  born  again. 
They  form  part  of  the  whole ;   and  we  see, 
therefore,   that   parts   of   that   which   has 
neither  beginning  nor  end  themselves  begin 
and  end.     We,   in  fact,  know  only  those 
parts;  and  they  are  of  a  number  so  infinite 
that  in  our  eyes  they  fill  all  infinity.     That 
which  is  going  nowhere  teems  with  that 
which    appears    to    be    going   somewhere. 
That   which   has   always   known    what    it 
wajits,   or  will  never  learn,   seems   to  be 
eternally  experimenting  with  more  or  less 
ill-success.    At  what  goal  is  it  aiming,  since 
it  is  already  there?     Everything  that  we 
discover  in  that  which  could  not  possibly 
have  an   object   looks   as  though   it  were 
pursuing    one   with    inconceivable    ardour; 
and  the  mind  that  animates  what  we  see  in 
that   which  should  know   everything   and 
possess  itself  seems  to  know  nothing  and  to 
seek  itself  without  intermission.     Thus  all 


202 


Our  Eternity 

that  is  apparent  to  our  senses  In  infinity 
gainsays  that  which  our  reason  is  compelled 
to  ascribe  to  it.  According  as  we  fathom  it, 
we  come  to  understand  how  deep  is  our 
want  of  understanding;  and,  the  more  we 
strive  to  penetrate  the  two  incomprehensible 
problems  that  stand  face  to  face,  the  more 
they  contradict  each  other. 

3 

What  will  become  of  us  amid  all  this 
confusion  ?  Shall  we  leave  the  finite  where- 
in we  dwell  to  be  swallowed  up  in  this  or 
the  other  infinite?  In  other  words,  shall 
we  end  by  absorption  in  the  infinite  which 
our  reason  conceives,  or  shall  we  remain 
eternally  in  that  which  our  eyes  behold, 
that  is  to  say,  in  numberless  changing  and 
ephemeral  worlds?  Shall  we  never  leave 
those  worlds  which  seem  doomed  to  die  and 
to  be  reborn  eternally,  to  enter  at  last  into 
that  which,   from  all  eternity,  can  neither 

203 


Our  Eternity 

have  been  born  nor  have  died  and  which 
exists  without  either  future  or  past?  Shall 
we  one  day  escape,  with  all  that  surrounds 
us,  from  this  unhappy  speculation,  to  find 
our  way  at  last  into  peace,  wisdom,  change- 
less and  boundless  consciousness,  or  into 
hopeless  unconsciousness?  Shall  we  have 
the  fate  which  our  senses  foretell,  or  that 
which  our  intelligence  demands?  Or  are 
both  senses  and  intelligence  only  illusions, 
puny  implements,  vain  weapons  of  an  hour, 
which  were  never  intended  to  examine  or 
defy  the  universe?  If  there  really  be  a 
contradiction,  is  it  wise  to  accept  it  and  to 
deem  impossible  that  which  we  do  not 
understand,  seeing  that  we  understand 
almost  nothing?  Is  truth  not  at  an  im- 
measurable distance  from  these  inconsist- 
encies which  appear  to  us  enormous  and 
irreducible  and  which,  doubtless,  are  of  no 
more  importance  than  the  rain  that  falls 
upon  the  sea? 

204 


Our  Eternity 

4 
But,  even  to  our  poor  understanding  of 

to-day,  the  discrepancy  between, the  infinity 
conceived  by  our  reason  and  that  perceived 
by  our  senses  is  perhaps  more  apparent  than 
real.  When  we  say  that,  in  a  universe  that 
has  existed  since  all  eternity,  every  experi- 
ment, every  possible  combination  has  been 
made;  when  we  declare  that  there  is  no 
chance  that  what  has  not  taken  place  in  the 
uncountable  past  can  take  place  in  the  un- 
countable future,  our  imagination  perhaps 
attributes  to  the  infinity  of  time  a  prepon- 
derance which  it  cannot  possess.  In  truth, 
all  that  infinity  contains  must  be  as  infinite 
as  the  time  at  its  disposal;  and  the  chances, 
encounters  and  combinations  that  lie  therein 
have  not  been  exhausted  in  the  eternity  that 
has  gone  before  us  any  more  than  they 
could  be  in  the  eternity  that  will  come  after 
us.     The  infinity  of  time  is  no  vaster  than 

the  infinity  of  the  substance  of  the  universe. 

205 


Our  Eternity 

Events,  forces,  chances,  causes,  effects, 
phenomena,  fusions,  combinations,  coinci- 
dences, harmonies,  unions,  possibilities, 
lives  are  represented  in  it  by  innumerous 
numbers  that  entirely  fill  a  bottomless  and 
vergeless  abyss  where  they  have  been 
shaken  together  from  what  we  call  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world  that  had  no  beginning 
and  where  they  will  be  stirred  up  until  the 
end  of  a  world  that  will  have  no  end. 
There  is,  therefore,  no  climax,  no  change- 
lessness,  no  immovability.  It  is  probable 
that  the  universe  is  seeking  and  finding  itself 
every  day,  that  it  has  not  become  entirely 
conscious  and  does  not  yet  know  what  it 
wants.  It  is  possible  that  its  ideal  is  still 
veiled  by  the  shadow  of  its  immensity;  it  is 
also  possible  that  experiments  and  chances 
are  following  one  upon  the  other  in  un- 
imaginable worlds,  compared  wherewith  all 
those  which  we  see  on  starry  nights  are  no 
more  than  a  pinch  of  gold-dust  in  the  ocean 

206 


Our  Eternity 

depths.  Lastly,  if  either  be  true,  it  Is  also 
true  that  we  ourselves,  or  what  remains  of 
us — It  matters  not — will  profit  one  day  by 
those  experiments  and  those  chances.  That 
which  has  not  yet  happened  may  suddenly 
supervene;  and  the  next  state,  with  the 
supreme  wisdom  which  will  recognize  and 
be  able  to  establish  that  state,  Is  perhaps 
ready  to  arise  from  the  clash  of  circum- 
stances. It  would  not  be  at  all  astonishing 
if  the  consciousness  of  the  universe,  in  the 
endeavour  to  form  Itself,  had  not  yet  en- 
countered the  combination  of  necessary 
chances  and  if  human  thought  were  actually 
supporting  one  of  those  decisive  chances. 
Here  there  Is  a  hope.  Small  as  man  and 
his  brain  may  appear,  they  have  exactly  the 
value  of  the  most  enormous  forces  that 
they  are  able  to  conceive,  since  there  is 
neither  great  nor  small  in  the  Immeasura- 
ble; and,  if  our  body  equalled  the  dimen- 
sions of  all  the  worlds  which  our  eyes  can 

207 


Our  Eternity 

see,  it  would  have  exactly  the  same  weight 
and  the  same  importance  as  compared  with 
the  universe  that  it  has  to-day.  The  mind 
alone  perhaps  occupies  in  infinity  a  space 
which  comparisons  do  not  reduce  to 
nothing. 


For  the  rest,  if  everything  must  be  said, 
at  the  cost  of  constantly  and  shamelessly 
contradicting  one's  self  in  the  dark,  and  to 
return  to  the  first  supposition,  the  idea  of 
possible  progress,  it  is  extremely  probable 
that  this  again  is  one  of  those  childish  dis- 
orders of  our  brain  which  prevents  us  from 
seeing  the  thing  that  is.  It  is  quite  as 
probable,  as  we  have  seen  above,  that  there 
never  was,  that  there  never  will  be  any 
progress,  because  there  could  not  be  a  goal. 
At  most  there  may  occur  a  few  ephemeral 
combinations  which,  to  our  poor  eyes,  will 
seem  happier  or  more  beautiful  than  others. 

208 


Our  Eternity- 
Even  so,  we  think  gold  more  beautiful  than 
the  mud  in  the  street,  or  the  flower  in  a 
splendid  garden  happier  than  the  stone  at 
the  bottom  of  a  drain;  but  all  this,  ob- 
viously, is  of  no  importance,  has  no  cor- 
responding reality  and  proves  nothing  in 
particular. 

The  more  we  reflect  upon  it,  the  more 
pronounced  is  the  infirmity  of  our  intelli- 
gence which  cannot  succeed  in  reconciling 
the  idea  of  progress  and  even  the  idea  of 
experiment  with  the  supreme  idea  of  in- 
finity. Although  nature  has  been  inces- 
santly and  indefatigably  repeating  herself 
before  our  eyes  for  thousands  of  years,  re- 
producing the  same  trees  and  the  same 
animals,  we  cannot  contrive  to  understand 
why  the  universe  indefinitely  recommences 
experiments  that  have  been  made  billions 
of  times.  It  is  inevitable  that,  in  the  in- 
numerable combinations  that  have  been  and 
are  being  made  in  termless  time  and  bound- 

209 


Our  Eternity 

less  space,  there  have  been  and  still  are 
millions  of  planets  and  consequently  mil- 
lions of  human  races  exactly  similar  to  our 
own,  side  by  side  with  myriads  of  others 
more  or  less  different  from  it.  Let  us  not 
say  to  ourselves  that  it  would  require  an 
unimaginable  concourse  of  circumstances 
to  reproduce  a  globe  like  to  our  earth  in 
every  respect.  We  must  remember  that  we 
are  in  the  infinite  and  that  this  unimaginable 
concourse  must  necessarily  take  place  in  the 
innumerousness  which  we  are  unable  to 
imagine.  Though  it  need  billions  and  bil- 
lions of  cases  for  two  features  to  coincide, 
those  billions  and  billions  will  encumber 
infinity  no  more  than  would  a  single  case. 
Place  an  infinite  number  of  worlds  in  an 
infinite  number  of  infinitely  diverse  circum- 
stances :  there  will  always  be  an  infinite 
number  for  which  those  circumstances  will 
be  alike;  if  not,  we  should  be  setting 
bounds  to  our  idea  of  the  universe,  which 

210 


Our  Eternity- 
would  forthwith  become  more  incompre- 
hensible still.  From  the  moment  that  we 
insist  sufficiently  upon  that  thought,  we 
necessarily  arrive  at  these  conclusions.  If 
they  have  not  struck  us  hitherto,  it  is  be- 
cause we  never  go  to  the  farthest  point  of 
our  imagination.  Now  the  farthest  point 
of  our  imagination  is  but  the  beginning  of 
reality  and  gives  us  only  a  small,  purely 
human  universe,  which,  vast  as  it  may  seem, 
dances  in  the  real  universe  like  an  apple  on 
the  sea.  I  repeat,  if  we  do  not  admit  that 
thousands  of  worlds,  similar  in  all  points 
to  our  own,  in  spite  of  the  billions  of  ad- 
verse chances,  have  always  existed  and  still 
exist  to-day,  we  are  sapping  the  foundations 
of  the  only  possible  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse or  of  infinity. 


Now   how   is   it   that   those  millions  of 
exactly  similar  human  races,  which  from  all 

211 


Our  Eternity 

time  suffer  what  we  have  suffered  and  are 
still  suffering,  profit  us  nothing,  that  all 
their  experiences  and  all  their  schools  have 
had  no  influence  upon  our  first  efforts  and 
that  everything  has  to  be  done  again  and 
begun  again  incessantly? 

As  we  see,  the  two  theories  balance  each 
other.  It  is  well  to  acquire  by  degrees  the 
habit  of  understanding  nothing.  There 
remains  to  us  the  faculty  of  choosing  the 
less  gloomy  of  the  two  or  persuading  our- 
seh^es  that  the  mists  of  the  other  exist  only 
in  our  brain.  As  that  strange  visionary, 
William  Blake,  said: 

"Nor  is  it  possible  to  thought 
A  greater  than  itself  to  know." 

Let  us  add  that  it  is  not  possible  for  it  to 
know  anything  other  than  itself.  What  we 
do  not  know  would  be  enough  to  create  the 
world  afresh;  and  what  we  do  know  cannot 
add  one  moment  to  the  life  of  a  fly.  Who 
can  tell  but  that  our  chief  mistake  lies  in 

212 


Our  Eternity 

believing  that  an  intelligence,  were  it  an 
intelligence  thousands  of  times  as  great  as 
ours,  directs  the  universe?  It  may  be  a 
force  of  quite  another  nature,  a  force  that 
differs  as  widely  from  that  on  which  our 
brain  prides  itself  as  electricity,  for  instance, 
differs  from  the  wind  that  blows.  That  is 
why  it  is  fairly  probable  that  our  mind, 
however  powerful  it  become,  will  always 
grope  in  mystery.  If  it  be  certain  that 
everything  In  us  must  also  be  in  nature, 
because  everything  comes  to  us  from  her;  if 
the  mind  and  all  the  logic  which  it  has 
placed  at  the  culminating  point  of  our  being 
direct  or  seem  to  direct  all  the  actions  of 
our  life,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  there 
is  not  in  the  universe  a  force  greatly 
superior  to  thought,  a  force  having  no 
imaginable  relation  to  the  mind,  a  force 
which  animates  and  governs  all  things  ac- 
cording to  other  laws  and  of  which  nothing 
is    found   in   us   but   almost    imperceptible 

213 


Our  Eternity 

traces,  even  as  almost  imperceptible  traces 
of  thought  are  all  that  can  be  found  In 
plants  and  minerals. 

In  any  case,  there  is  nothing  here  to  make 
us  lose  courage.  It  is  necessarily  the  human 
illusion  of  e\nl,  ugliness,  uselessness  and 
impossibility  that  is  to  blame.  We  must 
wait  not  for  the  universe  to  be  transformed, 
but  for  our  intelligence  to  expand  or  to  take 
part  in  the  other  force ;  and  we  must  main- 
tain our  confidence  in  a  world  which  knows 
nothing  of  our  conceptions  of  purpose  and 
progress,  because  it  doubtless  has  ideas 
whereof  we  have  no  idea,  a  world,  more- 
over, which  could  scarcely  wish  itself  harm. 

7 

"These  are  but  vain  speculations,"  it 
will  be  said.  "What  matters,  after  all,  the 
idea  which  we  form  of  those  things  which 
belong  to  the  unknowable,  seeing  that  the 
unknowable,  were  we  a  thousand  times  as 

214 


Our  Eternity 

intelligent  as  we  are,  is  closed  to  us  for  ever 
and  that  the  idea  which  we  form  of  it  will 
never  have  any  value?" 

That  is  true ;  but  there  are  degrees  in  our 
ignorance  of  the  unknowable ;  and  each  of 
those  degrees  marks  a  triumph  of  the  in- 
telligence. To  estimate  more  and  more 
completely  the  extent  of  what  it  does  not 
know  is  all  that  man's  knowledge  can  hope 
for.  Our  idea  of  the  unknowable  was  and 
always  will  be  valueless,  I  admit;  but  it 
nevertheless  is  and  will  remain  the  most 
important  idea  of  mankind.  All  our 
morality,  all  that  is  in  the  highest  degree 
noble  and  profound  in  our  existence  has 
always  been  based  on  this  idea  devoid  of 
real  value.  To-day,  as  yesterday,  even 
though  it  be  possible  to  recognize  more 
clearly  that  it  is  too  incomplete  and  relative 
ever  to  have  any  actual  value,  it  is  necessary 
to  carry  It  as  high  and  as  far  as  we  can.  It 
alone  creates  the  only  atmosphere  wherein 

215 


Our  Eternity 

the  best  part  of  ourselves  can  live.  Yes,  it 
Is  the  unknowable  into  which  we  shall  not 
enter;  but  that  is  no  reason  for  saying  to 
ourselves : 

"I  am  closing  all  the  doors  and  all  the 
windows;  henceforth  I  shall  interest  my- 
self only  in  things  which  my  every-day  in- 
telligence can  compass.  Those  things  alone 
have  the  right  to  influence  my  actions  and 
my  thoughts." 

Where  should  we  arrive  at  that  rate? 
What  things  can  my  intelligence  compass? 
Is  there  a  thing  in  this  world  that  can  be 
separated  from  the  inconceivable?  Since 
there  is  no  means  of  eliminating  that  in- 
conceivable, It  is  reasonable  and  salutary  to 
make  the  best  of  It  and  therefore  to  Imagine 
It  as  stupendously  vast  as  we  are  able.  The 
gravest  reproach  that  can  be  brought 
against  the  positive  religions  and  notably 
against  Christianity  Is  that  they  have  too 
often,  If  not  In  theory,  at  least  In  practice, 

216 


Our  Eternity 

encouraged  such  a  narrowing  of  the  mys- 
tery of  the  universe.  By  broadening  it,  we 
broaden  the  space  wherein  our  mind  will 
move.  It  is  for  us  what  we  make  it :  let  us 
then  form  it  of  all  that  we  can  reach  on  the 
horizon  of  ourselves.  As  for  the  mystery 
itself,  we  shall,  of  course,  never  reach  it; 
but  we  have  a  much  greater  chance  of  ap- 
proaching it  by  facing  it  and  going  whither 
it  draws  us  than  by  turning  our  backs  upon 
it  and  returning  to  that  place  where  we  well 
know  that  it  no  longer  is.  Not  by  diminish- 
ing our  thoughts  shall  we  diminish  the  dis- 
tance that  separates  us  from  the  ultimate 
truths;  but  by  enlarging  them  as  much  as 
possible  we  are  sure  of  deceiving  ourselves 
as  little  as  possible.  And  the  loftier  our 
idea  of  the  infinite  the  more  buoyant  and 
the  purer  becomes  the  spiritual  atmosphere 
wherein  we  live  and  the  wider  and  deeper 
the  horizon  against  which  our  thoughts  and 


217 


Our  Eternity 

feelings  stand  out,  the  horizon  which  is  all 
their  life  and  which  they  inspire. 

"Perpetually  to  construct  ideas  requiring 
the  utmost  stretch  of  our  faculties,"  wrote 
Herbert  Spencer,  "and  perpetually  to  find 
that  such  ideas  must  be  abandoned  as  futile 
imaginations,  may  realize  to  us  more  fully 
than  any  other  course  the  greatness  of  that 
which  we  vainly  strive  to  grasp.  ...  By 
continually  seeking  to  know  and  being 
continually  thrown  back  with  a  deepened 
conviction  of  the  impossibility  of  knowing, 
we  may  keep  alive  the  consciousness  that  it 
is  alike  our  highest  wisdom  and  our  highest 
duty  to  regard  that  through  which  all  things 
exist  as  the  Unknowable." 

8 

Whatever  the  ultimate  truth  may  be, 
whether  we  admit  the  abstract,  absolute  and 
perfect  Infinity — the  changeless,  immovable 

infinity  which  has  attained  perfection  and 

J 18 


Our  Eternity 

which  knows  everything,  to  which  our  rea- 
son tends — or  whether  we  prefer  that 
offered  to  us  by  the  evidence,  undeniable 
here  below,  of  our  senses — the  infinity 
which  seeks  itself,  which  is  still  evolving 
and  not  yet  established — it  behoves  us 
above  all  to  foresee  in  it  our  fate,  which,  for 
that  matter,  must,  in  either  case,  end  by 
absorption  in  that  very  infinity. 


219 


CHAPTER     XI 


OUR      FATE      IN      THOSE 
INFINITIES 


CHAPTER    XI 

OUR      FATE      IN      THOSE 
INFINITIES 

THE  first  infinity,  the  ideal  infinity, 
corresponds  most  nearly  with  the  re- 
quirements of  our  reason,  which  is  not  a 
reason  for  giving  it  the  preference.  It  is 
impossible  for  us  to  foresee  what,  we  shall 
become  in  it,  because  it  seems  to  exclude 
any  becoming.  It  therefore  but  remains 
for  us  to  address  ourselves  to  the  second, 
to  that  which  we  see  and  imagine  in  time 
and  space.  Furthermore,  it  is  possible  that 
it  may  precede  the  other.  However  abso- 
lute our  conception  of  the  universe,  we  have 
seen  that  we  can  always  admit  that  what 
has  not  taken  place  in  the  eternity  before  us 
will  happen  in  the  eternity  after  us  and 
that  there  is  nothing  save  an  untold  number 
of  chances  to  prevent  the  universe   from 

22.2 


Our  Eternity 

acquiring  in  the  end  that  perfect  conscious- 
ness which  will  establish  it  at  its  zenith. 


Behold  us,  then,  in  the  infinity  of  those 
worlds,  the  stellar  infinity,  the  infinity  of 
the  heavens,  which  assuredly  veils  other 
things  from  our  eyes,  but  which  cannot  be  a 
total  illusion.  It  seems  to  us  to  be  peopled 
only  with  objects — planets,  suns,  stars, 
nebulae,  atoms,  imponderous  fluids — which 
move,  unite  and  separate,  repel  and  attract 
one  another,  which  shrink  and  expand,  are 
for  ever  shifting  and  never  arrive,  which 
measure  space  in  that  which  has  no  con- 
fines and  number  the  hours  in  that  which 
has  no  term.  In  a  word,  we  are  in  an 
infinity  that  seems  to  have  almost  the  same 
character  and  the  same  habits  as  that 
power  in  the  midst  of  which  we  breathe 
and  which,  upon  our  earth,  we  call  nature 
or  life. 

224 


Our  Eternity 

What  win  be  our  fate  In  that  Infinity? 
We  are  asking  ourselves  no  Idle  question, 
even  If  we  should  unite  with  It  after  losing 
all  consciousness,  all  notion  of  the  ego,  even 
If  we  should  exist  there  as  no  more  than  a 
little  nameless  substance — soul  or  matter, 
we  cannot  tell — suspended  In  the  equally 
nameless  abyss  that  replaces  time  and  space. 
It  Is  not  an  Idle  question,  for  It  concerns  the 
history  of  the  worlds  or  of  the  universe; 
and  this  history,  far  more  than  that  of  our 
petty  existence,  is  our  own  great  history,  in 
which  perhaps  something  of  ourselves  or 
something  Incomparably  better  and  vaster 
win  end  by  meeting  us  again  some  day. 


Shall  we  be  unhappy  there  ?  It  Is  hardly 
reassuring  when  we  consider  the  ways  of 
nature  and  remember  that  we  form  part  of 
a   universe  that  has  not  yet  gathered   Its 

225 


Our  Eternity 

wisdom.     We  have  seen,  it  Is  true,  that 

good  and  bad  fortune  exist  only  in  so  far  as 

regards  our  body  and  that,  when  we  have 

lost  the  organ  of  suffering,  we  shall  not 

meet  any  of  the  earthly  sorrows  again.    But 

our  anxiety  does  not  end  here;    and  will 

not  our  mind,  lingering  upon  our  erstwhile 

sorrows,    drifting   derelict   from  world  to 

world,  unknown  to  itself  in  an  unknowable 

that  seeks   itself  hopelessly,   will   not   our 

mind  know  here  the  frightful  torture  of 

which  we  have  already  spoken  and  which  is 

doubtless    the    last    that    imagination    can 

touch  with  its  wing?    Finally,  if  there  were 

nothing  left  of  our  body  and  our  mind, 

there  would  still  remain  the  matter  and  the 

spirit    (or,    at   least,   the   obviously  single 

force  to  which  we  give  that  double  name) 

which  composed  them  and  whose  fate  must 

be  no  more  indifferent  to  us  than  our  own 

fate;    for,  let  us  repeat,   from  our  death 

onwards,  the  adventure  of  the  universe  be- 

226 


Our  Eternity 

comes  our  own  adventure.  Let  us  not. 
therefore,  say  to  ourselves : 

"What  can  it  matter?  We  shall  not  be 
there." 

We  shall  be  there  always,  because  every- 
thing will  be  there. 

4 

And  will  this  everything  wherein  we 
shall  be  included,  in  a  world  ever  seeking 
itself,  continue  a  prey  to  new  and  perpetual 
and  perhaps  painful  experiences  ?  Since  the 
part  that  we  were  was  unhappy,  why  should 
the  part  that  we  shall  be  enjoy  a  better 
fortune?  Who  can  assure  us  that  yonder 
unending  combinations  and  endeavours  will 
not  be  more  sorrowful,  more  stupid  and 
more  baneful  than  those  which  we  are 
leaving;  and  how  shall  we  explain  that 
these  have  come  about  after  so  many  mil- 
lions of  others  which  ought  to  have  opened 
the  eyes  of  the  genius  of  infinity?     It  is  idle 

227 


Our  Eternity 

to  persuade  ourselves,  as  Hindu  wisdom 
would,  that  our  sorrows  are  but  illusions 
and  appearances:  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  they  make  us  very  really  unhappy. 
Has  the  universe  elsewhere  a  more  complete 
consciousness,  a  more  just  and  serene  under- 
standing than  on  this  earth  and  in  the 
worlds  which  we  discern?  And,  if  it  be 
true  that  it  has  somewhere  attained  that 
better  understanding,  why  does  the  mind 
that  presides  over  the  destinies  of  our  earth 
not  profit  by  it?  Is  no  communication 
possible  between  worlds  which  must  have 
been  born  of  the  same  idea  and  which  lie 
in  its  depths  ?  What  would  be  the  mystery 
of  that  isolation?  Are  we  to  believe  that 
the  earth  marks  the  farthest  stage  and  the 
most  successful  experiment?  What,  then, 
can  the  mind  of  the  universe  have  done  and 
against  what  darkness  must  it  have  strug- 
gled, to  have  come  only  to  this?  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  darkness  and  those 

228 


Our  Eternity 

barriers  which  can  have  come  only  from 
itself,  since  they  could  have  arisen  no  else- 
where, have  they  the  power  to  stay  its 
progress?  Who  then  could  have  set  those 
insoluble  problems  to  infinity  and  from 
what  more  remote  and  profound  region 
than  itself  could  they  have  issued?  Some 
one,  after  all,  must  know  the  answer  to 
them;  and,  as  behind  infinity  there  can  be 
none  that  is  not  infinity  itself,  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  imagine  a  malignant  will  in  a  will 
that  leaves  no  point  around  it  which  is  not 
wholly  covered.  Or  are  the  experiments 
begun  in  the  stars  continued  mechanically, 
by  virtue  of  the  force  acquired,  without 
regard  to  their  uselessness  and  their  pitiful 
consequences,  according  to  the  custom  of 
nature,  who  knows  nothing  of  our  parsi- 
mony and  squanders  the  suns  in  space  as 
she  does  the  seed  on  earth,  knowing  that 
nothing  can  be  lost?  Or,  again,  is  the 
whole  question  of  our  peace  and  happiness, 

229 


Our  Eternity 

like  that  of  the  fate  of  the  worlds,  reduced 
to  knowing  whether  or  not  the  infinity  of 
endeavours  and  combinations  be  equal  to 
that  of  eternity?  Or,  lastly,  to  come  to 
what  is  most  likely,  is  it  we  who  deceive 
ourselves,  who  know  nothing,  who  see 
nothing  and  who  consider  imperfect  that 
which  is  perhaps  faultless;  we,  who  are  but 
an  infinitesimal  fragment  of  the  intelligence 
which  we  judge  by  the  aid  of  the  little 
shreds  of  understanding  which  it  has  vouch- 
safed to  lend  us? 

5 

How  could  we  reply,  how  could  our 
thoughts  and  glances  penetrate  the  infinite 
and  the  invisible,  we  who  do  not  under- 
stand nor  even  see  the  thing  by  which  we 
see  and  which  is  the  source  of  all  our 
thoughts  ?  In  fact,  as  has  been  very  justly 
observed,  man  does  not  see  light  itself.  He 
sees  only  matter,  or  rather  the  small  part 

230 


Our  Eternity 

of  the  great  worlds  which  he  knows  by  the 
name  of  matter,  touched  by  light.    He  does 
not  perceive  the  immense  rays  that  cross 
the  heavens  save  at  the  moment  when  they 
are  stopped  by  an  object  akin  to  those  with 
which  his  eye  is  familiar  upon  this  earth: 
were   it  othenvise,   the  whole   space  filled 
with  innumerable  suns  and  boundless  forces, 
instead  of  being  an  abyss  of  absolute  dark- 
ness,  absorbing   and  extinguishing  pencils 
of  light  that  shoot  across   it  from  every 
side,  would  be  but  a  monstrous  and  unbear- 
able ocean  of  flashes.     And,  if  we  do  not 
see  the  light,  at  least  we  think  we  know  a 
few  of  its  rays  or  its  reflexions;  but  we  are 
absolutely  ignorant  of  that  which  is  unquest- 
ionably the  essential  law  of  the  universe, 
namely,  gravitation.     What  is  that  force, 
the   most    powerful    of   all    and   the    least 
visible,  imperceptible  to  our  senses,  without 
form,  without  colour,  without  temperature, 
without  substance,  without  savour  and  with- 

231 


Our  Eternity 

out  voice,  but  so  awful  that  it  suspends  and 
moves  in  space  all  the  worlds  which  we  see 
and  all  those  which  we  shall  never  know  ? 
More  rapid,  more  subtle,  more  incorporeal 
than  thought,  it  wields  such  sway  over 
everything  that  exists,  from  the  infinitely 
great  to  the  infinitely  small,  that  there  is 
not  a  grain  of  sand  upon  our  earth  nor  a 
drop  of  blood  in  our  veins  but  are  pene- 
trated, wrought  upon  and  quickened  by  it 
until  they  act  at  every  moment  upon  the 
farthest  planet  of  the  last  solar  system  that 
we  struggle  to  imagine  beyond  the  bounds 
of  our  imagination. 

Shakspeare's  famous  lines, 

"There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth,  Horatio, 
Than  are  dreanat  of  in  your  philosophy," 

have  long  since  become  utterly  inadequate. 
There  are  no  longer  more  things  than  our 
philosophy  can  dream  of  or  imagine :  there 
is  none  but  things  which  it  cannot  dream  of, 
there  is  nothing  but  the  unimaginable ;  and, 

2^2 


Our  Eternity 

if  we  do  not  even  see  the  light,  which  is  the 
one  thing  that  we  helieved  we  saw,  it  may 
be  said  that  there  is  nothing  all  around  us 
but  the  invisible. 

We  move  in  the  illusion  of  seeing  and 
knowing  that  which  is  strictly  indispensable 
to  our  little  lives.  As  for  all  the  rest,  which 
is  well-nigh  everything,  our  organs  not  only 
debar  us  from  reaching,  seeing  or  feeling  it, 
but  even  restrain  us  from  suspecting  what 
it  is,  just  as  they  would  prevent  us  from 
understanding  it,  if  an  intelligence  of  a 
different  order  were  to  bethink  itself  of 
revealing  or  explaining  it  to  us.  The  num- 
ber and  volume  of  those  mysteries  is  as 
boundless  as  the  universe  itself.  If  man- 
kind were  one  day  to  draw  near  to  those 
which  to-day  it  deems  the  greatest  and  the 
most  inaccessible,  such  as  the  origin  and 
the  aim  of  life,  it  would  at  once  behold 
rising  up  behind  them,  like  eternal  mount- 
ains,   others   quite   as   great   and   quite   as 

233 


Our  Eternity 

unfathomable;  and  so  on,  without  end.  In 
relation  to  that  which  it  would  have  to  know 
in  order  to  hold  the  key  to  this  world,  it 
would  always  find  itself  at  the  same  point 
of  central  ignorance.  It  would  be  just  the 
same  if  we  possessed  an  intelligence  several 
million  times  greater  and  more  penetrating 
than  ours.  All  that  its  miraculously  in- 
creased power  could  discover  would  en- 
counter limits  no  less  impassable  than  at 
present.  All  is  boundless  in  that  which  has 
no  bounds.  We  shall  be  the  eternal  pris- 
oners of  the  universe.  It  is  therefore  im- 
possible for  us  to  appreciate  in  any  degree 
whatsoever,  in  the  smallest  conceivable 
respect,  the  present  state  of  the  universe 
and  to  say,  as  long  as  we  are  men,  whether 
it  follows  a  straight  line  or  describes  an 
immense  circle,  whether  it  is  growing  wiser 
or  madder,  whether  it  is  advancing  towards 
the  eternity  which  has  no  end  or  retracing 
its  steps  towards  that  which  had  no  begin- 

234 


Our  Eternity 

ning.  Our  sole  privilege  within  our  tiny 
confines  is  to  struggle  to\Yards  that  which 
appears  to  us  the  best  and  to  remain  he- 
roically persuaded  that  no  part  of  what  we 
do  within  those  confines  can  ever  be  wholly 
lost. 


But  let  not  all  these  insoluble  questions 
drive  us  towards  fear.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  our  future  beyond  the  grave  it  is 
in  no  way  necessary^  that  we  should  have  an 
answer  to  everything.  Whether  the  uni- 
verse have  already  found  its  consciousness, 
whether  it  find  it  one  day  or  seek  it  ever- 
lastingly, it  could  not  exist  for  the  purpose 
of  being  unhappy  and  of  suffering,  neither 
in  its  entirety,  nor  in  any  one  of  its  parts; 
and  it  matters  little  if  the  latter  be  invisible 
or  incommensurable,  considering  that  the 
smallest  is  as  great  as  the  greatest  in  what 
has  neither  limit  nor  measure.     To  torture 

2.35 


Our  Eternity 

a  point  is  the  same  thing  as  to  torture  the 
worlds;  and,  if  it  torture  the  worlds,  it  is 
its  own  substance  that  it  tortures.  Its  very 
fate,  wherein  we  have  our  part,  protects  us; 
for  we  are  simply  morsels  of  infinity.  It  is 
inseparable  from  us  as  we  are  inseparable 
from  it.  Its  breath  is  our  breath,  its  aim 
is  our  aim  and  we  bear  within  us  all  its 
mysteries.  We  participate  in  it  everywhere. 
There  is  naught  in  us  that  escapes  it;  there 
is  naught  in  it  but  belongs  to  us.  It  extends 
us,  fills  us,  traverses  us  on  every  side.  In 
space  and  time  and  in  that  which,  beyond 
space  and  time,  has  as  yet  no  name,  we 
represent  it  and  summarize  it  completely, 
with  all  its  properties  and  all  its  future ;  and, 
if  its  immensity  terrifies  us,  we  are  as  terri- 
fying as  itself. 

If,  therefore,  we  had  to  suffer  in  it,  our 
sufferings  could  be  but  ephemeral;  and 
nothing  matters  that  is  not  eternal.  It  is 
possible,  although  somewhat  incomprehen- 

236 


Our  Eternity 

sible,  that  parts  should  err  and  go  astray; 
but  it  is  impossible  that  sorrow  should  be 
one  of  its  lasting  and  necessary  laws;  for  it 
would  have  brought  that  law  to  bear  against 
itself.  In  like  manner,  the  universe  is  and 
must  be  its  own  law  and  its  sole  master:  if 
not,  the  law  or  the  master  whom  it  must 
obey  would  be  the  universe  alone ;  and  the 
centre  of  a  word  which  we  pronounce  with- 
out being  able  to  grasp  its  scope  would  be 
simply  shifted.  If  it  be  unhappy,  that 
means  that  it  wills  its  own  unhappiness;  if 
it  will  its  unhappiness,  it  is  mad;  and,  if  it 
appear  to  us  mad,  that  means  that  our  rea- 
son works  contrary  to  everything  and  to 
the  only  laws  possible,  seeing  that  they  are 
eternal,  or,  to  speak  more  humbly,  that  it 
judges  what  it  wholly  fails  to  understand. 

7 

Everything,  therefore,  must  end,  or  per- 
haps already  be,  if  not  in  a  state  of  happi- 

237 


Our  Eternity 

ness,  at  least  in  a  state  exempt  from  all 
suffering,  all  anxiety,  all  lasting  unhappi- 
ness;  and  what,  after  all,  is  our  happiness 
upon  this  earth,  if  it  be  not  the  absence  of 
sorrow,  anxiety  and  unhappiness? 

But  it  is  childish  to  talk  of  happiness  and 
unhappiness  where  infinity  is  in  question. 
The  idea  which  we  entertain  of  happiness 
and  unhappiness  is  something  so  special,  so 
human,  so  fragile  that  it  does  not  exceed  our 
stature  and  falls  to  dust  as  soon  as  we  take 
it  out  of  its  little  sphere.  It  proceeds  en- 
tirely from  a  few  contingencies  of  our 
nerves,  which  are  made  to  appreciate  very 
slight  happenings,  but  which  could  as  easily 
have  felt  everything  the  opposite  way  and 
taken  pleasure  in  that  which  is  now  pain. 

I  do  not  know  if  my  readers  remember 
the  striking  passage  in  which  Sir  William 
Crookes  shows  how  well-nigh  all  that  we 
consider  as  essential  laws  of  nature  would 
be   falsified  in  the  eyes  of  a  microscopic 

238 


Our  Eternity 

man,  while  forces  of  which  we  are  almost 
wholly  ignorant,  such  as  surface-tension, 
capillarity,  the  Brownian  mov^ements,  would 
preponderate.  Walking  on  a  cabbage-leaf, 
for  instance,  after  the  dew  had  fallen,  and 
seeing  it  studded  with  huge  crystal  globes, 
he  would  infer  that  water  was  a  solid  body 
which  assumes  spherical  form  and  rises  in 
the  air.  At  no  great  distance,  he  might 
come  to  a  pond,  when  he  would  observe 
that  this  same  matter,  instead  of  rising  up- 
wards, now  seems  to  slope  downwards  in  a 
vast  curve  from  the  brink.  If  he  managed, 
with  the  aid  of  his  friends,  to  throw  into 
the  water  one  of  those  enormous  steel  bars 
which  we  call  needles,  he  would  see  that  it 
made  a  sort  of  concave  trough  on  the  sur- 
face and  floated  tranquilly.  From  these 
experiments  and  a  thousand  others  which  he 
might  make  he  would  naturally  deduce 
theories  diametrically  opposed  to  those 
upon  which  our  entire  existence  is  based. 

239 


Our  Eternity- 
It  would  be  the  same  if  the  changes  were 
made  in  the  direction  of  time,  to  take  an 
hypothesis    imagined    by    the    philosopher 
William  James: 

"Suppose  we  were  able,  within  the 
length  of  a  second,  to  note  distinctly  ten 
thousand  events  instead  of  barely  ten,  as 
now;  lif  our  life  were  then  destined  to 
hold  the  same  number  of  impressions  it 
might  be  a  thousand  times  as  short.  We 
should  live  less  than  a  month,  and  per- 
sonally know  nothing  of  the  change  of  sea- 
sons. If  born  in  winter,  we  should  believe 
in  summer  as  we  now  believe  in  the  heats  of 
the  carboniferous  era.  The  motions  of 
organic  beings  would  be  so  slow  to  our 
senses  as  to  be  Inferred,  not  seen.  The  sun 
would  stand  still  In  the  sky,  the  moon  be 
almost  free  from  change  and  so  on.  But 
now  reverse  the  hypothesis,  and  suppose  a 
being  to  get  only  one  thousandth  part  of 
the  sensations  that  we  get  in  a  given  tlme^ 

240 


Our  Eternity 

and  consequently  to  live  a  thousand  times 
as  long.  Winters  and  summers  will  be  to 
him  like  quarters  of  an  hour.  Mushrooms 
and  the  swifter  growing  plans  will  shoot 
into  being  so  rapidly  as  to  appear  instan- 
taneous creations;  annual  shrubs  will  rise 
and  fall  from  the  earth  like  restlessly  boil- 
ing water-springs;  the  motions  of  animals 
will  be  as  invisible  as  are  to  us  the  move- 
ments of  bullets  and  cannon-balls ;  the  sun 
will  scour  through  the  sky  like  a  meteor, 
leaving  a  fiery  trail  behind  him,  &c.  That 
such  imaginary  cases  (barring  the  super- 
human longevity)  may  be  realized  some- 
where in  the  animal  kingdom,  it  would  be 
rash  to  deny." 

8 

We  believe  that  we  see  nothing  hanging 
over  us  but  catastrophes,  deaths,  torments 
and  disasters;  we  shiver  at  the  mere 
thought  of  the  great  interplanetary  spaces, 

241 


Our  Eternity 

with  their  intense  cold  and  their  awful  and 
gloomy  solitudes;  and  we  imagine  that  the 
worlds  that  revolve  through  space  are  as 
unhappy  as  ourselves  because  they  freeze, 
,  or  disaggregate,  or  clash  together,  or  are 
consumed  in  unutterable  flames.  We  infer 
from  this  that  the  genius  of  the  universe  is 
an  abominable  tyrant,  seized  with  a  mon- 
strous madness,  delighting  only  in  the  tor- 
ture of  itself  and  all  that  it  contains.  To 
millions  of  stars,  each  many  thousand  times 
larger  than  our  sun,  to  nebulas  whose  nature 
and  dimensions  no  figure,  no  word  in  our 
language  is  able  to  express,  we  attribute  our 
momentary  sensibility,  the  little  ephemeral 
play  of  our  nerves;  and  we  are  convinced 
that  life  there  must  be  impossible  or  appall- 
ing, because  we  should  feel  too  hot  or  too 
cold.  It  were  much  wiser  to  say  to  our- 
selves that  it  would  need  but  a  trifle,  a  few 
papillae  more  or  less  to  our  skin,  the 
slightest  modification  of  our  eyes  and  ears, 

242 


Our  Eternity 

to  turn  the  temperature  of  space,  its  silence 
and  its  darkness  into  a  delicious  spring- 
time, an  incomparable  music,  a  divine  light. 

"Nothing  is  too  wonderful  to  be  true," 
said  Faraday. 

It  were  much  more  reasonable  to  per- 
suade ourselves  that  the  catastrophes  which 
our  imagination  sees  there  are  life  itself,  the 
joy  and  one  or  other  of  those  immense  festi- 
vals of  mind  and  matter  in  which  death, 
thrusting  aside  at  last  our  two  enemies, 
time  and  space,  will  soon  permit  us  to  take 
part.  Each  world  dissolving,  extinguished, 
crumbling,  burnt  or  colliding  with  another 
world  and  pulverized  means  the  commence- 
ment of  a  magnificent  experiment,  the  dawn 
of  a  marvellous  hope  and  perhaps  an  unex- 
pected happiness  drawn  direct  from  the 
inexhaustible  unknown.  What  though  they 
freeze  or  flame,  collect  or  disperse,  pursue 
or  flee  one  another:  mind  and  matter,  no 
longer  united  by  the  same  pitiful  hazard 

24.3 


Our  Eternity 

that  joined  them  in  us,  must  rejoice  at  all 
that  happens;  for  all  is  but  birth  and  re- 
birth, a  departure  into  an  unknown  filled 
with  wonderful  promises  and  maybe  an 
anticipation  of  some  Ineffable  event. 


244 


CHAPTER     XII 


CONCLUSIONS 


CHAPTER   XII 

CONCLUSIONS 


IN  order  to  retain  a  livelier  image  of  all 
this  and  a  more  exact  memory,  let  us 
give  a  last  glance  at  the  road  which  we  have 
travelled.  We  have  put  aside,  for  reasons 
which  we  have  stated,  the  religious  solu- 
tions and  total  annihilation.  Annihilation 
is  physically  impossible;  the  religious  solu- 
tions occupy  a  citadel  without  doors  or 
windows  into  which  human  reason  does  not 
penetrate.  Next  comes  the  hypothesis  of 
the  survival  of  our  ego,  released  from  its 
body,  but  retaining  a  full  and  unimpaired 
consciousness  of  its  identity.  We  have 
seen  that  this  hypothesis,  strictly  defined, 
has  very  little  likelihood  and  is  not  greatly 
to  be  desired,  although,  with  the  surrender 

247 


Our  Eternity 

of  the  body,  the  source  of  all  our  ills,  it 
seems  less  to  be  feared  than  our  actual 
existence.  On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as 
we  try  to  extend  or  to  exalt  it,  so  that  it 
may  appear  less  barbarous  or  less  crude, 
we  come  back  to  the  hypothesis  of  a  cosmic 
consciousness  or  of  a  modified  conscious- 
ness, which,  together  with  that  of  a  survival 
without  any  sort  of  consciousness,  closes  the 
field  to  every  supposition  and  exhausts  every 
forecast  of  the  imagination. 

Survival  without  any  sort  of  conscious- 
ness would  be  tantamount  for  us  to  annihila- 
tion pure  and  simple  and  consequently 
would  be  no  more  dreadful  than  the  latter, 
that  is  to  say,  than  a  sleep  with  no  dreams 
and  with  no  awakening.  The  hypothesis  is 
unquestionably  more  acceptable  than  that  of 
annihilation;  but  it  prejudges  very  rashly 
the  questions  of  a  cosmic  consciousness  and 
of  a  modified  consciousness. 


248 


Our  Eternity 

2 

Before  replying  to  these,  we  must  choose 
our  universe,  for  we  have  the  choice.  It  Is 
a  matter  of  knowing  how  we  propose  to 
look  at  Infinity.  Is  It  the  moveless,  Im- 
movable infinity,  from  all  eternity  perfect 
and  at  Its  zenith,  and  the  purposeless  uni- 
verse that  our  reason  will  conceive  at  the 
farthest  point  of  our  thoughts?  Do  we 
believe  that,  at  our  death,  the  illusion  of 
movement  and  progress  which  we  see  from 
the  depths  of  this  life  will  suddenly  fade 
away?  If  so,  it  is  inevitable  that,  at  our 
last  breath,  we  shall  be  absorbed  In  what, 
for  lack  of  a  better  term,  we  call  the  cosmic 
consciousness.  Are  we,  on  the  other  hand, 
persuaded  that  death  will  reveal  to  us  that 
the  illusion  lies  not  in  our  senses,  but  In  our 
reason  and  that,  In  a  world  Incontestably 
alive,  despite  the  eternity  preceding  our 
birth,  all  the  experiments  have  not  been 
made,  that  Is  to  say,  that  movement  and 

249 


Our  Eternity 

evolution  continue  and  will  never  and  no- 
where stop?  In  that  case,  we  must  at  once 
accept  the  hypothesis  of  a  modified  or  pro- 
gressive consciousness.  The  two  aspects, 
after  all,  are  equally  unintelligible,  but  de- 
fensible; and,  although  really  irrecon- 
cilable, they  agree  on  one  point,  namely, 
that  unending  pain  and  unredeemed  misery 
are  alike  excluded  from  them  both  for  ever. 

3 

The  hypothesis  of  a  modified  conscious- 
ness does  not  necessitate  the  loss  of  the  tiny 
consciousness  acquired  in  our  body;  but  it 
makes  it  almost  negligible,  flings,  drowns 
and  dissolves  it  in  infinity.  It  is  of  course 
impossible  to  support  this  hypothesis  with 
satisfactory  proofs;  but  it  is  not  easy  to 
shatter  it  like  the  others.  Were  it  per- 
missible to  speak  of  likeness  to  truth  in  this 
connexion,  when  our  only  truth  is  that  we 
do  not  see  the  truth,  it  is  the  most  likely  of 

250 


Our  Eternity 

the  interim  hypotheses  and  giv^es  a  magnifi- 
cent opening  for  the  most  plausible,  the 
most  varied  and  the  most  alluring  dreams. 
Will  our  ego,  our  soul,  our  spirit,  or  what- 
ever we  call  that  which  will  survive  us  in 
order  to  continue  us  as  we  are,  will  it  find 
again,  on  leaving  the  body,  the  innumerable 
lives  which  it  must  have  lived  since  the 
thousands  of  years  that  had  no  beginning? 
Will  it  continue  to  increase  by  assimilating 
all  that  it  meets  in  infinity  during  the 
thousands  of  years  that  will  have  no  end? 
Will  it  linger  for  a  time  around  our  earth, 
leading,  in  regions  invisible  to  our  eyes,  an 
ever  higher  and  happier  existence,  as  the 
theosophists  and  spiritualists  contend?  Will 
it  move  towards  other  planetary  systems, 
will  it  emigrate  to  other  worlds  whose 
existence  is  not  even  suspected  by  our 
senses?  Everything  seems  permissible  in 
this  great  dream,  save  that  which  might 
arrest  its  flight. 

251 


Our  Eternity 

Nevertheless,  so  soon  as  it  ventures  too 
far  in  the  iiltramondane  spaces,  it  crashes 
into  strange  obstacles  and  breaks  its  wings 
against  them.  If  we  admit  that  our  ego 
does  not  remain  eternally  what  it  was  at  the 
moment  of  our  death,  we  can  no  longer 
imagine  that,  at  a  given  second,  it  stops, 
ceases  to  expand  and  rise,  attains  its  per- 
fection and  its  fulness,  to  become  no  more 
than  a  sort  of  motionless  wreck  suspended 
in  eternity  and  a  finished  thing  in  the  midst 
of  that  which  will  never  finish.  That  would 
Indeed  be  the  only  real  death  and  the  more 
fearful  inasmuch  as  it  would  set  a  limit  to 
an  unparalleled  life  an,d  intelligence,  beside 
which  those  which  we  possess  here  below 
would  not  even  weigh  what  a  drop  of  water 
weighs  when  compared  with  the  ocean,  or  a 
grain  of  sand  when  placed  in  the  scales  with 
a  mountain-chain.  In  a  word,  either  we 
believe  that  our  evolution  will  one  day  stop, 
implying  thereby  an  incomprehensible  end 

252 


Our  Eternity 

and  a  sort  of  inconceivable  death;  or  we 
admit  that  it  has  no  limit,  whereupon,  being 
infinite,  it  assumes  all  the  properties  of  in- 
finity and  must  needs  be  lost  in  infinity  and 
united  with  it.  This,  withal,  is  the  latter 
end  of  theosophy,  spiritualism  and  all  the 
religions  in  which  man,  in  his  ultimate  hap- 
piness, is  absorbed  by  God.  And  this  again 
is  an  incomprehensible  end,  but  at  least  it  is 
life.  And  then,  taking  one  incomprehensi- 
bility with  another,  after  doing  all  that  is 
humanly  possible  to  understand  one  or  the 
other  riddle,  let  us  by  preference  leap  into 
the  greatest  and  therefore  the  most  prob- 
able, the  one  which  contains  all  the  others 
and  after  which  nothing  more  remains.  If 
not,  the  questions  reappear  at  every  stage 
and  the  answers  are  always  conflicting. 
And  questions  and  answers  lead  us  to  the 
same  inevitable  abyss.  As  we  shall  have  to 
face  it  sooner  or  later,  why  not  make  for  it 
straightway?    All  that  happens  to  us  in  the 

253 


Our  Eternity 

interval  interests  us  beyond  a  doubt,  but 
does  not  detain  us,  because  it  is  not  eternal. 


Behold  us  then  before  the  mystery  of  the 
cosmic  consciousness.  Although  we  are  in- 
capable of  understanding  the  act  of  an 
infinity  that  would  have  to  fold  itself  up  in 
order  to  feel  itself  and  consequently  to  de- 
fine itself  and  separate  itself  from  other 
things,  this  is  not  an  adequate  reason  for 
declaring  it  impossible;  for,  if  we  were  to 
reject  all  the  realities  and  impossibilities 
that  we  do  not  understand,  there  would  be 
nothing  left  for  us  to  live  upon.  If  this 
consciousness  exist  under  the  form  which 
we  have  conceived,  it  is  evident  that  we  shall 
be  there  and  take  part  in  it.  If  there  be  a 
consciousness  somewhere,  or  some  thing 
that  takes  the  place  of  consciousness,  we 
shall  be  in  that  consciousness  or  that  thing, 
because  we  cannot  be  elsewhere.     And,  as 

254 


Our  Eternity 

this  consciousness  or  this  thing  cannot  be 
unhappy,  because  it  is  impossible  that  in- 
finity should  exist  for  its  own  unhappiness, 
neither  shall  we  be  unhappy  when  we  are 
in  it.  Lastly,  if  the  infinity  into  which  we 
shall  be  projected  have  no  sort  of  conscious- 
ness nor  anything  that  stands  for  it,  the 
reason  will  be  that  consciousness  or  any- 
thing that  might  replace  it  is  not  indispensa- 
ble to  eternal  happiness. 

5 

That,  I  think,  is  about  as  much  as  we 
may  be  permitted  to  declare,  for  the  mo- 
ment, to  the  spirit  anxiously  facing  the 
unfathomable  space  wherein  death  will 
shortly  hurl  it.  It  can  still  hope  to  find 
there  the  fulfilment  of  its  dreams;  it  will 
perhaps  find  less  to  dread  than  it  had 
feared.  If  it  prefer  to  remain  expectant 
and  to  accept  none  of  the  hypotheses  which 
I  have  expounded  to  the  best  of  my  power 

255 


Our  Eternity 

and  without  prejudice,  it  nevertheless  seems 
difficult  not  to  welcome,  at  least,  this  great 
assurance  which  we  find  at  the  bottom  of 
every  one  of  them,  namely,  that  infinity 
could  not  be  malevolent,  seeing  that,  if  it 
eternally  tortured  the  least  among  us,  it 
would  be  torturing  something  which  it  can- 
not tear  out  of  itself  and  that  it  would  there- 
fore be  torturing  its  very  self, 

I  have  added  nothing  to  what  was 
already  known.  I  have  simply  tried  to 
separate  what  may  be  true  from  that  which 
is  assuredly  not  true ;  for,  if  we  do  not  know 
where  truth  is,  we  nevertheless  learn  to 
know  where  it  is  not.  And,  perhaps,  in 
seeking  for  that  undiscoverable  truth,  we 
shall  have  accustomed  our  eyes  to  pierce 
the  terror  of  the  last  hour  by  looking  it  full 
in  the  face.  Many  things,  beyond  a  doubt, 
remain  to  be  said  which  others  will  say 
with  greater  force  and  brilliancy.  But  we 
need  have  no  hope  that  any  one  will  utter 

256 


Our  Eternity 

on  this  earth  the  word  that  shall  put  an 
end  to  our  uncertainties.     It  is  very  prob- 
able, on  the  contrary,  that  no  one  in  this 
world,  nor  perhaps  in  the  next,  will  discover 
the  great  secret  of  the  universe.    And,  if  we 
reflect  upon  this  even  for  a  moment,  it  is 
most  fortunate  that  it  should  be  so.     We 
have  not  only  to  resign  ourselves  to  living 
in  the  incomprehensible,  but  to  rejoice  that 
we  cannot  go  out  of  it.     If  there  were  no 
more  insoluble  questions  nor  impenetrable 
riddles,  Infinity  would  not  be  infinite;  and 
then  we  should  have  for  ever  to  curse  the 
fate  that  placed  us  in  a  universe  proportion- 
ate  to    our   intelligence.      All   that    exists 
would  be  but  a  gateless  prison,  an  irrepara- 
ble evil  and  mistake.     The  unknown  and 
the  unknowable  are  necessary  and  will  per- 
haps always  be  necessary  to  our  happiness. 
In  any  case,   I  would  not  wish  my  worst 
enemy,  were  his  understanding  a  thousand- 
fold  loftier  and   a   thousandfold  mightier 

257 


Our  Eternity 

than  mine,  to  be  condemned  eternally  to 
inhabit  a  world  of  which  he  had  surprised 
an  essential  secret  and  of  which,  as  a  man, 
he  had  begun  to  grasp  the  least  atom. 

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